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j UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



PEEPS 



AT OUR 



SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 



BY REV. ALFRED TAYLOR, 

Author of " Sunday-School Photographs," etc. 



'- -. 






NEW YORK: 
NELSON & PHILLIPS, 

CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL DEPAKT11E.NT. 



i)t Cong k ess 

WASHINGTON 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in tile year 1874, by 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



PREFACE. 



* 

HERE are some sketches of the work, 
and of the workers at work. They 
are from life. 

Encouraged by the very cordial and unex- 
pectedly favorable reception given on both 
sides of the Atlantic Ocean to my "Sun- 
day-School Photographs," published sev- 
eral years ago, I have put these " Peeps " 
into the form in which you now look through 
them. As you go with me to look at the 
Sunday-schools, and we enjoy our brief 
glimpses at them, please to remember that 
these pages are not meant to contain finely 
spun theories, or didactic disquisitions on 
what a Sunday-school ought to be, but 
rather pictures of what our schools are. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. Marching On 7 

II. The Great Variety of Schools . 15 

III. The Parsimonious Sunday-School 22 

IV. The Mixed-Up Sunday-School 30 

V. The Uneasy Sunday-School 37 

VI. The High-Pressure Sunday-School 45 

VII. The Gloomy Sunday-School ■ 52 , 

VIII. The Enterprising Sunday-School 57 

IX. The Inharmonious Sunday-School 62 

X. The Inefficient Sunday-School 67 

XI. The Worn-Out Sunday-School 73 

XII. The Hotel Sunday-School 79 

XIII. The Underground Sunday-School 85 

XIV. The Unventilated Sunday-School 91 

XV. The Sunshiny Sunday-School 99 

XVI. A Very Peculiar Sunday-School 105 

XVII. The Uneducated Sunday-School no 

XVIII. The Sun-Struck Sunday-School 116 

XIX. The Frost-Bitten Sunday-School 122 

XX. The Back-Woods Sunday-School 127 

XXI. The .Little Primary People 132 

XXII. The Starved Kittle Jnfant School 138 



6 Contents. 

Chapter Page 

XXIII. The Flourishing Infant School 144 

XXIV. The Model Sunday-School 152 

XXV. The Young People in their 'Teens 157 

XXVI. The Blackboard in the Sunday-School..;... 161 

XXVII. The Sunday-School Excheque*r 173 

XXVIII. The Teacher Asleep 181 

XXIX. Procrustes in the Sunday-School 187 

XXX. The Anniversary Business 194 

XXXJ. The Voice of Song in the Sunday-School 206 

XXXII. The Crammed Child 217 

XXXIII. Mr. Heavy and his Teaching 223 

XXXIV. The Teachers' Study- Meeting 235 

XXXV. Getting Ready for the Lord's Day 245 

XXXVI. What will Come of It All? 250 



PEEPS 



OUR SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 



W 



I. 

arrjring #n* 

E are pushing on rapidly. The Sun- 
day-school of to-day is no more like 
the Sunday-school of twenty-five years ago 
than the railroad of to-day is like the old flat- 
railed contrivance, on which the conductor 
held the rails down with his fingers until 
the wheezy little locomotive slowly dragged 
our fathers over the rickety structure. At 
thirty miles* an hour, the forty-ton engine 
and the superb palace-car now push their 
way to the Pacific Coast, awakening the 
whole land from slumber to energy, and 
pointing the way to mighty improvement — 
to large results — in every branch of Chris- 
tian work as well as secular. 



8 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

We are progressing bravely, thank God! 
There were some good schools twenty-five or 
thirty years ago — many of them. A school 
that was both large and good was an excep- 
tional thing. The school to which I went in 
my boyhood had about nine hundred children 
in it, and was considered, as it truly was, a 
wonder. There was none in town like it. 
While we must not consider numbers the 
chief element of success, yet let us be thank- 
ful that there are now many schools in the 
land, each with a much larger membership 
than that. And let us also rejoice that an 
immense class of our juvenile population is 
now reached by the Sunday-school, which the 
school of a generation ago neglected. 

We have progressed in the estimation in 
which good Church members regard Sunday- 
school work. Thousands of people who used 
to sneer at the Sunday-school as a child's 
plaything, are now ready to labor for it, to 
teach in it, to help pay its bills, and in other 
ways to cast their influence on the side of its 
success. The miserable old prejudice against 
the Sunday-school, that it was the opponent 
of the Church, or the competitor with the 



Marching On. 9 

Church for honors which belong exclusively 
to the Church, is rapidly passing away. The 
Church of to-day regards the school as a part 
of itself — neither enemy nor rival. It recog- 
nizes the class and the desk as the auxiliaries 
of the pulpit, giving the Gospel to the chil- 
dren, and preparing them for the deeper and 
richer work which the pulpit has to do in 
showing them how to grow in grace. 

The Sunday-school of to-day is lodged in 
better accommodations than our fathers en- 
joyed. The sepulchral basement, with its 
ill-smelling, decaying floor, its musty walls, 
and its rheumatic atmosphere, is discarded 
wherever it is possible, and used for the stor- 
age of coal and rubbish, as it always should 
have been. The sunshiny upper room, with 
pleasant walls and cheerful pictures, with 
comfortable seats and carpeted floor, wel- 
comes the children to happiness as well as to 
instruction. When a new church is built a 
new Sunday-school room is generally built to 
match it The new room is provided with 
decent ventilating and heating apparatus, 
with convenient seats, and with all that makes 
for health as well as for comfort. 



io Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

We have better helps than we used to 
have. A favorite idea of the Sunday-school 
work of the last generation was, that it ought 
to be done very cheaply. This idea was the 
parent of the six-penny question book, and 
other " helps," which helped the teacher as 
little as possible for his money, and which 
confused the poor scholar entirely. That 
class of educational books which profess to 
teach French, Latin, German, or fiddle-play- 
ing, for twenty-five cents each, convey to 
the unsatisfied learner the merest smattering 
of that which they pretend to teach. So 
with the six-penny help. With the necessity 
for better things came the demand. Some 
of the old sort are yet published, it is true, 
by antiquated owners of stereotype plates, 
who should long ago have sent those plates 
to the melting-pot ; but the demand is for 
something better. The supply and the de- 
mand keep together as closely as the lamented 
Siamese twins ever did. 

With better helps we have better study on 
the part of teachers. Map, chart, commen- 
tary, dictionary, illustrated travels, pictures 
of all descriptions, help the teacher, not to 



Marching On. 



II 



puzzle the child by reading to him unanswer- 
able printed questions, but first to store his 
own mind with knowledge, and then to con- 
vey that knowledge to the mind of the child. 
There is less reading Scripture by rote than 
there used to be. There is more understand- 
ing of the true meaning of the sacred word. 
There are boys of fourteen years old who to- 
day know more about the Bible than many 
Sunday-school teachers knew thirty years 
ago. Study on the part of the teacher leads 
to study on the part of the boy and girl. 
Children love to go to school now more than 
of old, some of them merely because it is 
attractive but many of them because they are 
learning something, and learning it in a pleas- 
ant way. With all the mere pleasantness of 
the school, it is safe to say that our children 
are becoming better acquainted with the 
meaning of the Scriptures than most children 
of the same age were thirty years ago. 

If there were no other signs of progress 
than the present condition of " Uniform 
Lesson " work and study, we should see 
enough to make us thankful for living in the 
march of to-day. Thousands upon thousands 



12 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

of children and their teachers are studying, 
every week, the same passage of Scripture, 
in well-selected courses of lessons, carefully 
chosen by some of the best men in the land. 
The ablest heads and the warmest hearts 
in every denomination of Christians devote 
themselves to the preparation of " Lesson 
Leaves," " Lesson Readings," and the other 
helps to the study of these passages of Script- 
ure. Whole towns, and even large cities, are 
so well united on the study of these lessons 
that teachers meet together in great compa- 
nies for evening study-meetings, drawn by a 
common interest in preparing themselves for 
the lesson which all will teach on the coming 
Lord's day. There is a vitality about the 
study of the lesson, and its teaching, which 
never animated the old desultory fashion, 
which left each teacher to take whatever les- 
son he chose, or no lesson at all, according as 
it suited him. 

We are progressing triumphantly with our 
music. Mear, Dundee, Windham, and China 
are all good tunes, and there is much more 
music of the same kind, and just as good. So 
is stale bread wholesome food ; but we do 



Marching On. 13 

not like to be compelled to sing the one or 
eat the other all the time. Perhaps some of 
our modern music is too vivacious ; but let us 
have it so rather than too dismal. Only let 
us guard against the introduction of trashy 
music and ridiculous rhymes. Children will 
sing any thing they are taught, provided the 
tune is not too gloomy. We will ring out 
worthy songs of praise till the sound goes 
forth a blessed mission to every home in the 
country ; till the song of Divine grace is car- 
ried, on happy voice of children, to destitute 
souls never reached by the regular ministra- 
tions of the pulpit. 

We pray better, too. How precious the 
teachers' prayer-meeting ! How delightful 
the little gathering of children, held in many 
a school, to ask for blessing on the work in 
their own hearts and the hearts of their 
friends ! How glorious the news, when tid- 
ings of conversions cheer the prayer-meeting, 
and animate teacher and scholar to renewed 
efforts in the labor of love ! 

And so we march on. Once in awhile 
some good brother of fifty years ago wakes 
up to tell us that these days are not half so 



14 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

good as the former days, and that we ought 
to go back and do things as they were done 
when he was a boy. But, while we respect 
his sincerity and the depth of his convictions, 
we will yet journey by rail rather than by 
stage. We will break up the soil with the 
steam-plow when the old style of labor fails 
to do the work. We will cut our harvest with 
the machine reaper, rather than have whole 
fields of it go to waste for the want of reap- 
ing. We will use every device that God has 
put into the heart and brain of man to make, 
to help us in our work. And in his strength 
we will march on! On, to great results in 
gathering children ! On, to great attain- 
ments in the knowledge of the truth ! On, to 
more prayer, more study, more work ! On, 
to final victory through the blood of Jesus 
Christ — to the welcome which awaits us at 
his right hand, with all the children he has 
given us. 



The Great Variety of Sunday-Schools. 15 



II. 

THE well disposed, but empty orator, 
who harangues an assembly of fellow- 
beings in reference to the Sunday-school 
work, sayyig, " My friends, the Sunday-school 
is a great institution, a very great institution ; 
one of the greatest institutions in the world, 
my friends," has a general idea that all Sun- 
day-schools are cast in the same mold, and 
finished alike, after the manner of cannon, or 
nickel pennies, or brass buttons. He is not 
thoroughly correct. When we examine a lot 
of great guns in a fort, we do find that they 
all look very much alike. But the experi- 
enced gunner will tell you that his pet gun 
will carry its death-dealing ball a mile and a 
half farther than will the great gun in the 
next casemate, which seems to be its twin 
brother. Although the nickel coins seem so 
much alike, even a casual glance discloses the 
fact that they differ in dates, and in the expe- 



16 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

rience they have had at the hands of those 
who have used them as a circulating medium. 
Brass buttons differ as to their patterns, sur- 
faces, sizes, and even as to the ways in 
which their eyes are fastened in. So with a 
flock of sheep. A careful examination re- 
veals the fact that each individual sheep has 
its own expression of countenance, and that 
these expressions are almost as diverse as the 
expressions of the human face. 

It is even more so with the Sunday-school. 
Hardly two schools can be found exactly 
alike in all respects. Even though one school 
may copy another as closely as possible, the 
copy is not perfect, owing to some local cir- 
cumstances, or inability to carry out other 
men's ideas. It is well that there are differ- 
ences. If all Sunday-schools were molded 
and fashioned alike, it would be productive 
of disagreeable monotony, especially if the 
standard mold were a poor one. The great 
variety of style in which Sunday-school work 
is done affords opportunity for the exercise 
of inventive genius, and for wisely appro- 
priating to our own use the thoughts and 
experience of other people. The proprietor 



Great Variety of Sunday- Schools. 17 

of a mill is naturally on the lookout for im- 
provements in machinery suited to his pur- 
poses. The shop-keeper is wide awake for 
new ideas in the carrying on of his business, 
and does not hesitate to build on the founda- 
tion of other brains than his own. 

The children of this world are quicker in 
taking hold of new ideas, and in making im- 
provements in old ones, than are the children 
of light. If an invention or improvement in 
worldly matters is good and useful, it is sure 
to be extensively followed. An improvement 
in Church or Sunday-school has to struggle 
against prejudice, hard names, and the charge 
of being a wicked innovation on ancient and 
honored precedent. The world adorns its 
theaters and concert rooms^ ventilates them, 
and furnishes them with seats on which 
human beings can sit without risk of break- 
ing their backs. The church, in too many 
instances, daubs its walls with unsightly bur- 
lesques of art, seats its congregation on nar- 
row, straight-backed benches, with cushions 
for those who pay for them and hard boards 
for the impecunious stranger. It provides 
several small holes in the walls or ceiling of 



1 8 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

a large building, nominally to ventilate it, and 
then wonders that the people prefer to stay 
at home rather than to come to places where 
the physical man is made so uncomfortable 
that the spiritual man must go hungry. The 
world educates its children in spacious public 
schools, with high ceilings, and all the modern 
conveniences of walnut and cast-iron furni- 
ture, of lattdst pattern arid best workmanship. 
The little ones who are taught the truths of 
the Gaspel in Sunday-school are too often 
humbled to cellar lodgings under the church, 
and are allowed to take their chance of get- 
ting rheumatism, or colds in their heads, or 
of being suffocated by impure air, which is so 
freely thrown off front youthful lurigs, but for 
which the building committee forgot to allow 
means of exit. Even where the Church itself, 
has stepped forward into the ranks of enter- 
prising improvement, and has introduced the 
latest novelties in comfort and convenience, 
the Sunday-school is crow'ded into a sort of 
back kitchen, or basement, with the privilege 
of going up to the third tier to listen to the 
preaching. The church, which is up to the 
times in the matter of elegant fresco work, 



The Great Variety of Sunday- Schools. 19 

and which adorns the recess in the rear of the 
pulpit with a magnificently painted decep- 
tion — a colonnade, for instance, pretending to 
stretch back about a quarter of a mile, like a 
long market-house — is too often content to 
educate its children in a barn-like, unpainted 
room, whose dismal walls testify to the fact 
that the thin coat of whitewash which is 
spread on them was furnished grudgingly, 
and of necessity. 

The children of light have in the progress 
of recent years partially waked up to their 
deficiency in these matters. Still, with all 
the latter-day improvement in church build- 
ing, and in conducting Sunday-schools, we 
must confess that the children of this world 
are wonderfully ahead in enterprise, energy, 
and persistency in their efforts to instruct 
and entertain, after their fashion, the rising 
and the risen generation. Let the Church 
of the living God be at least even with them. 
Let us be awake to every thing that can in- 
crease our efficiency in carrying on the work 
which is committed to us. 

The various features of the Sunday-school 
work are before us for examination. The 



20 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

work is conducted differently in different 
places, and under different circumstances. 
We find not only the cheap Sunday-school, 
compressed into uncomfortable quarters, but 
we find elsewhere the " purple and fine linen " 
Sunday-schools. We find one school a model 
of good order, and another a disgrace ; one 
so interesting that the children rush to it, 
while its next neighbor is conducted so drear- 
ily that no reasonable child cares about hav- 
ing any thing to do with it. One school is 
celebrated for its efficiency, while another 
drags slipshod along, accomplishing little or 
nothing ; one does its work quietly and faith- 
fully, while its spread-eagle rival makes a 
great fuss, and is supposed to have evangel- 
ized all the little people within five miles 
of it. 

There is more to be learned from actual 
observation of real Sunday-schools than from 
didactic discussions of what Sunday-schools 
ought to be. We can form our best judg- 
ment of the condition of the work of to-day 
by faithfully picturing it, and then looking 
fairly at the pictures. To this end let us 
take a series of brief peeps at some of the 



The Great Variety of Stmday-Sckools. 21 

representative schools of diverse types of 
character — good, bad, and indifferent. We go 
with a view to learn from them ; to copy 
what is good, to take warning from what is 
bad or unwise : not to examine merely with 
a view to criticism, but to profitable and kind 
admonition. With all the advance and im- 
provement in all branches of the work, there 
is yet room for more. Let us hopefully labor 
for it ! 



22 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



III. 

VERY little money is spent on it. The 
people of the church to which it be- 
longs think that it is not worth spending 
much for. They are not far from right, for it 
is a poor affair of a Sunday-school, and if it 
is to be made no better, time, money, and 
brains are wasted in keeping up its shabby 
existence. Thinking it is worthless, they put 
their theory into practice by withholding the 
funds necessary to its prosperity. Expensive 
theories often fail of being put into practice ; 
but when the theory is one involving the sav- 
ing of money, it is likely to go into operation. 
The prodigal people who carry on the 
church over yonder, spend six or seven hun- 
dred dollars a year on their Sunday-school. 
The narrow-minded persons who run this 
school reason therefrom that they are wan- 
tonly throwing away money ; that they ought 
not to lavish on their school an amount equal 



The Parsimonious Sunday-School. 23 

to what many congregations pay for the sup- 
port of pastor, pastor's wife, pastoral horse, 
and six little pastoral children ; and that they 
will set an example of praiseworthy economy 
by running their Sunday-school for as little 
money as possible. They will even try to 
have it cost nothing at all. They rejoice 
over the fact, as they count up the yearly 
expenses of the whole establishment, that 
they have saved something. 

The idea of economy is a right and useful 
idea in its proper place and bounds. In- 
stances are on record of its having been car- 
ried too far. A man may save considerable 
money by not educating his children at all ; 
but he will find it expensive in the end to let 
them grow up dunces. The supplies for the 
family table may be cut down, so as to mate- 
rially lessen sums paid to butcher, grocer, 
and milkman ; but the head of the family will 
some day wake to the fact that the style of 
domestic economy produces great leanness 
of flesh in the family. The shopkeeper may- 
turn down the lights in his windows till the 
gas burns blue ; he reduces his gas bill, but 
drives away his customers. You may go 



24 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

almost without clothes, and save coal by fill- 
ing your grate half full of brick-bats ; but 
your aching joints and shivering flesh will 
painfully tell you that it would have been 
wiser economy to procure good and reason- 
able fuel and raiment, and plenty of them. 
The traditional person who fed his horse on 
shavings and shoe-pegs, instead of on hay 
and oats, saved in the amount of his feed bill, 
but is said to have suffered the loss of the 
animal on which he tried the economical 
experiment. 

We knock at the door of the parsimonious 
Sunday-school. It opens of its own accord, 
for the latch is broken, and to mend it would 
have cost twenty-five cents, which amount it 
was thought best to save. These little ex- 
penses, says the financial man of the school, 
do amount up so ; at the end of the year they 
make quite a bill. We pause to wipe the 
mud from our feet, but there is no door-mat 
Some thievish person carried it away six 
months ago, and another has not been pro- 
cured. A mat would cost a dollar and a half, 
which had better go to the heathen. We 
would sit down. Some boys in the class near 



The Parsimonious Sunday-School. 25 

to the door crowd together to make room for 
us ; for there are no benches provided for 
visitors ; it would cost too much. The su- 
perintendent stands behind an old thing 
which used to be the church pulpit. When 
he raps on it with a stick, which he does to 
call the school to order, he raises a cloud of 
dust from the old straw and dry-goods com- 
posing the cushion. Part of the Gospel 
according to Matthew is torn out of the large 
Bible, which was used in the church till it 
wore out, when it was generously given to 
the Sunday-school, with the kind regards of 
the Church. A new Bible was then provided 
for the church, and a new white and gilt pul- 
pit was erected. The congregation up stairs 
sit on hair cushions, with red moreen covers ; 
the children in the uncomfortable basement 
into which we have entered, sit on benches 
about as luxurious as saw-horses. The rays 
of the sun find their way into the grown peo- 
ple's sanctuary through colored glass ; the 
only coloring on these basement windows is 
from the dust that has collected, and the mud 
that has been splashed on the seven-by-nine 
panes which were thought good enough for 



26 Teeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

the Sunday-school. There is an absence of 
cheerful warmth and comfort. The chimney 
is out of order ; and the stove, a second-hand 
one purchased for five dollars less than a new 
one could have been bought for, does not 
draw well. There are no boxes, drawers, 
shelves, or closets for the reception of the 
books ; consequently each class leaves its 
books in a pile on the floor, under the end of 
the bench. The books are a little soiled and 
dog-e^red ; but that is no matter, they are 
only children's books. No money has been 
wasted in tinsel decoration of the walls of 
this school, nor have any pictures been pro- 
vided to call off the attention of the young 
people from their lessons. The solitary 
adornments of the walls is a dismal map of 
Palestine on muslin, " Entered according to 
Act of Congress in the year 1842." This 
help to the understanding of the sacred 
Scripture has been suffered to remain, 
speckled by the flies of summer, darkened by 
the smoke of winter, and browned by the 
dust all the year round, till it is now more of 
a time-stained relic of the past than an assist- 
ance in present geographical research. 



The Parsimonious Sunday-School. 27 

The literary and intellectual furniture of 
this concern is of much the same order as the 
stove, the windows, and the walls. The 
shabby hymn books, out of which the children 
sing very shabby music, suggest the idea of 
an economy which has not found its way into 
the choir of the church, where the stately 
organ, with several rows of gilt pipes, makes 
harmony with vocal praise from golden-edged 
hymn books. The school is now studying 
the same lessons that were studied last year, 
not from a desire to clinch the nails of truth 
then driven, but from the fact that it has not 
been deemed best to incur the expense of 
new question books. The idea of uniting 
with other schools in the study of a uniform 
series of lessons does not occur to these good 
folks. The library books, few in number, are 
broken backed, torn, and smeared, present- 
ing, in their appearance on the shelves, no 
inducement to any ambitious child to take 
and read. No Sunday-school papers are 
taken for the children or teachers, for it 
would cost several dollars a year to furnish 
them. 

It has alreadv been remarked that the 



28 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

« 

singing is poor — a kind of rusty singing, 
which refuses to get new music, new hymns, 
new instruments, or new helps of any kind. 
There is no enthusiasm about it, and there is 
very little real music. Enthusiasm is costly. 
The better we sing, the more new music we 
need to buy. The hymn book used is one 
published thirty years ago, excellent in its 
way, but not up to the times. Three children 
crowd to look over each hymn book, for there 
are not enough to go round the school. 

But somebody will say, that, notwithstand- 
ing all these deficiencies, the Gospel is taught 
in truth and simplicity. If it be so, well. But 
when the surroundings of religious teaching 
are as beggarly as these, the religious teach- 
ing itself is generally weak stuff. It is true 
that the Gospel can be taught in a barn, or a 
cave, or an old railroad car, or even in the 
open air, which is cheaper than all. But we 
do not seek a barn if we can get better ac- 
commodations, nor do we go down into a 
cave, if we can be provided with quarters 
above ground. Open-air preaching is praise- 
* worthy in season ; but when the ponds are 
frozen, and snow lies a foot deep on the 



T/le Parsimonious Sunday- School. 29 

ground, a comfortable church, with heating 
apparatus in full blast, is desirable. 

Had there been a Sunday-school depart- 
ment in Solomon's temple, it would have 
been gotten up in good style. Solomon 
would not have crowded the little Israelites 
into a damp, uncomfortable cellar, or into a 
mean upper story, destitute of the comforts 
of life. He would not have calculated how 
many shekels of gold he could have saved 
by making the young folks put up with mean 
accommodations ; nor would he have con- 
tracted with Hiram, king of Tyre, for a lot 
of knotty and unseasoned timber, "just to 
finish the Sunday-school." 

The Sunday-school is worth all it costs. 
Out with that pinching parsimony which 
closely calculates the lowest penny for which 
it can be managed. 



30 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



IV. 

WHERE do you go to Sunday-school, 
Jimmy ?" 

" Why, marm, I goes to the Baptisses, and 
the Methodisses, and the Presbyteriums ; but 
IVe been a trying the Tiscopals for two or 
three weeks." 

"You don't seem to belong anywhere then, 
Jimmy." 

" Why, yes, marm, don't you see ? I belongs 
to 'em all, exceptin' the Tiscopals ; but I'm 
going to jine them too, now." 

"Well, Jimmy, what's your idea in going 
to so many ? " 

" Why, you see, I gits a little of what's go- 
ing on at 'em all, ,marm. I gits liberries, and 
hymn books, and all that ; and when they has 
pic-nics, I goes to every one of 'em." 

The complication of affairs which the 
youthful Jimmy assists in making, exists alike 
in village and city, in metropolis and in coun- 



The lilixcd-up Sunday-Scliool. 

try town. A sort of religious vagabondism ; 
a wandering propensity of girls and boys 
who are anxious for continual novelty and 
excitement, who need to be anchored in 
one place, both for their own good and the 
good of the schools to and from which they 
unceremoniously run. 

The mixed-up Sunday-school works under 
great disadvantage. It does not know what 
is its own and what is its neighbor's. Its own 
affairs and the affairs of its neighbors some- 
times become so intimately mixed that it 
would be hard to ascertain whether or not it 
has any thing that is strictly its own. It has 
never succeeded in making itself so attract- 
ive to the youngsters who come to it as to 
induce them to belong only to it. Here are 
boys and girls who are present only one Sun- 
day out of three or four. Ask them where 
they have been, they will probably tell you 
that they "couldn't come." Or they may tell 
you the straight-forward story of their having 
been to some other schools during their ab- 
sence. Visit the other schools in the neigh- 
borhood occasionally, and you will find a num- 
ber of your own scholars there, and looking 



32 ' Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

as if they belonged there. Can any thing be 
invented which will more certainly tangle the 
work of the school than this system, on 
rather, want of system ? 

The library of the mixed-up Sunday-school 
contains a number of books which belong to 
other schools. They have been brought in 
by children who have taken them from the 
libraries to which they belong. These wan- 
dering children are, of course, slovenly and 
careless in their habits, and cannot be ex- 
pected to think of such a small matter as 
returning a book to its right place. In addi- 
tion to the mixture of books thus provided 
for, there is a great vacancy on the shelves, 
which may be accounted for by the fact that 
children who feel no more interest in a school 
than to straggle away from it in this fashion, 
care very little about returning the books 
which they have borrowed from it. Books 
which should be on the shelves, in good con- 
dition and neat order, are on the kitchen 
mantel or closet shelves of families who 
should have sent them back months ago. It 
is more by happy accident than by any par- 
ticularly careful management, that these vol- 



TJie Mixed- up Sunday-School. 33 

umes are not in the coal scuttle. When 
" house-cleaning " time occurs in these fam- 
ilies, it sometimes happens that a child starts 
from home with an armful of books which 
have thus laid idle and forgotten. The child 
takes them at random to the school she hap- 
pens to belong to for that day, even though 
they may happen to be the property of half a 
dozen different schools. They are all grist 
to the mill of the careless librarian, who re- 
ceives them "without prejudice," asking no 
questions for conscience' sake. There ought 
to be a system inaugurated in these schools 
of exchanging and restoring such stray prop- 
erty, as the street railroad companies ex- 
change their tickets, or as the banks exchange 
their checks and notes through the li clearing 
house." 

As the library gets mixed, so does the 
instruction, only in a greater degree. A per- 
son who teaches a child whom he sees only 
one Sunday out of four, and who is being 
taught elsewhere on the other Sundays, can- 
not work with much hope of large success. 
There is no bond of union or affection be- 
tween teacher and scholar, nor can there be 

, 3 



34 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

under any such vagrant arrangement. The 
scholar can receive very little benefit ; for, 
instead of the advantages of continual attend- 
ance* on a systematic course of scriptural 
instruction, he gets only a hash, made up of 
such learning as he picks up from week to 
week at the various establishments of relig- 
ious learning to which he wanders. 

Now for mending the matter. It ought to 
be thoroughly mended. 

Each school must secure a firmer grasp on 
its own scholars, so as to keep them ; not 
entering into competition with neighboring 
schools, for that is foolish and wicked ;' but 
if there is any use in establishing a school, 
there is use in keeping it up faithfully. No 
child will run away from the school in which 
' he is thoroughly interested, and of which he 
feels he is a part. The school which is con- 
ducted so poorly as to allow itself to get 
into this tangled condition, needs better 
teaching, and a higher standard of things 
generally. 

We must put away the idea that the child 
is to be rewarded for coming to Sunday- 
school. If that idea is held out, it is very 



The Mixed-tip Sunday- School. 35 

easy for a school, by getting up some extra 
attraction, to break all the schools in the 
neighborhood, only to be succeeded by bank- 
ruptcy, in its turn, when some other school 
turns over a new leaf, and offers yet greater 
inducements to the children to patronize it. 

The roll-book must be carefully attended 
to. When Jimmy is absent, note the fact, 
and ascertain the cause of it. Find out what 
his affinities are, if he has any. If all his 
cousins, and the boys with whom he plays, go 
to the school around the corner, advise him 
to go there too. A large roll, made up of 
children who do not attend, is not so desir- 
able as a small one that is weeded of all but 
those who regularly come. • 

Careful attention to the roll must be fol- 
lowed up by industrious and pleasant visit- 
ing. If a teacher says he cannot or will not 
visit his scholars, his name may safely be 
dropped from the roll. And if a teacher 
visits, and makes himself disagreeable at the 
houses to which he goes, drop him, for he 
will do more harm than good. If Jimmy is 
faithfully looked after by a kind and intelli- 
gent person, whose visits are as cheerful as 



36 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

sunshine, there will be no difficulty about 
getting him to come to school, and no trouble 
in finding out what school he belongs to. 

Teacher, follow up the vagrant . Jimmy 
boys ; make yourself interesting to them ; 
compel them to love you ; and you will 
straighten out all such tangles as this from 
the school. 



The Uneasy Sunday- School. 37 



• 



V. 

IT is time to begin school. The superin- 
tendent is in his place, prepared to set 
things in motion. Of the twenty-five classes 
which compose the school, the teachers of 
sixteen are in their places and ready for 
work. The superintendent sighs as he looks 
at the nine vacant chairs, and wonders how 
he may make good the deficiency. He knows 
that some of the absentees will remain ab- 
sent, and that others of them will, according 
to their custom, straggle into the school some 
minutes after the exercises have begun. He 
does not immediately hunt up teachers for all 
the vacant classes, for it would be annoying 
to put them to work only to be presently 
interrupted by the arrival of the tardy teach- 
ers. The opening exercises go on, and, while 
they are in progress, four of the late teachers 
wander in. The remaining five stay away. 
They have neither provided substitutes nor 



38 'Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

informed the superintendent that they would 
be absent. He finds it a troublesome task 
to provide, at a moment's notice, five substi- 
tutes for the careless ones, who have allowed 
weak excuses to keep them from their posts 
of duty. His trouble is all on account of his 
being a new hand in the office of superin- 
tendent. The school is so fond of change as 
to elect a new set of officers whenever oppor- 
tunity presents itself. The teachers believe 
in the soundness of the doctrine of rotation 
in office. As soon as a man has been long 
enough in office to become acquainted with 
his duties they put him out, and put some- 
body else into his place. 

There is nothing particularly permanent 
or reliable about this school. The teachers 
change classes whenever they take a notion 
to. The scholars follow their example, and 
choose what classes they will belong to, and 
the time of emigration from one class to 
another. The teacher of the principal Bible- 
class feels that he has a sudden call to be 
librarian, and off he goes, leaving his class 
to take its chance of finding a good teacher 
or of going without. Last year an able-bodied 



The Uneasy Sunday-ScliooL 39 

man taught the infant-school. Now it is 
in charge of a very young lady. Next year 
the young lady, proving a failure, it will prob- 
ably be turned over to one of the mothers in 
Israel. Half a dozen new ways of keeping 
the library are invented and practiced in the 
course of a year,.the consequence being that 
the wish is sometimes indulged in that the 
makers of Sunday-school books had turned 
their industry into some other channel, and 
had not bothered the youth of the land by 
providing what has turned out to be such a 
nuisance. 

It sometimes happens in this school that a 
class will gradually fade away, one scholar 
after another dropping off, until at last the 
teacher declares that she don't know where 
her class has all gone to, and that there is no 
use in her coming any more, for she has no 
class to teach. The difficulty is, that the 
children have noticed the irregular and ex- 
temporaneous style of their teacher's efforts, 
and have lost what little interest they had 
in the school. If the teacher will look 
them up, they will probably come back. If 
she keeps visiting them, and is always ready 



4 
40 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

on Sunday to teach them something inter- 
esting and instructive, they will be very glad 
to stay. 

The uneasy school turns over a great many 
new leaves — a new leaf for each new idea. 
Ideas come easily, and are followed up with- 
out much thought. The time of meeting has 
been in the morning. Somebody suggests an 
afternoon session instead. Without weigh- 
ing the matter, a resolution is passed, and the 
morning session gives way to the afternooa 
Or the change is made from one session to 
two, or from two sessions to one. No one 
way is tried long enough to prove whether it 
is good or bad. The teachers' meeting is 
held monthly for two consecutive months ; 
then some very good cause arises for omit- 
ting it, and no more teachers' meetings are 
held till the next change of affairs, when a 
new start is taken, and with much the same 
result. The school ought to have its time- 
table printed anew every few weeks, just as a 
certain railroad amuses and entertains its pas- 
sengers by changing the hours of its trains 
every now and then, and by running one train 
in six on time. The passengers take the 



The Uneasy Sunday- School. 41 

time-tables, and respectfully put them into 
their pockets. 

The music of this school goes, like the 
other parts of the enterprise, by jerks. 
Sometimes there is a great deal of music, 
sometimes almost none, and that very poor. 
When a new music book comes out, there is 
a run on it, till the stirring pieces are sung 
through, when the book is laid aside as stale, 
The school recently learned all that was to 
be learned in the " Sunday-School Fiddle." 
Having now discontinued the use of that 
popular book, they are now up to their ears 
in " The Juvenile Screecher," which will be, 
in its turn, put on the shelf when its ephem- 
eral popularity is worn out. 

The charitable operations are on a footing 
with the rest ; sometimes on a high-pressure, 
pickpocket principle ; sometimes weak and 
meager. When a popular object is presented 
the money flows liberally as long as the en- 
thusiasm lasts. The popular object is soon 
forgotten, and suffered to go hungry. The 
agent of a foreign mission enterprise came 
along some time ago, and appealed so pow- 
erfully in behalf of his work, that the school 



42 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

determined to pay for the education of a 
heathen child. The youthful heathen was 
named in honor of the pastor, and supplied 
with pantaloons and stockings, as well as with 
a year's expenses ; but a western missionary 
now makes his appearance, and is twice as 
eloquent as the foreign mission man. The 
school concludes to let somebody else pay 
the heathens way, in order that the money 
may now be spent on a man whom its mem- 
bers have seen with their own eyes, and whom 
they know to be an actual being. 

The school has a constitution and by-laws 
— enough constitution and by-laws for all the 
schools in the neighborhood. They have 
been patched, and mended, and cobbled, and 
tinkered, from time to time, as emergency 
seemed to arise, till now almost any thing is 
legal, almost every idea that can be suggested 
is constitutional. It is an advantage to have, 
a constitution so comprehensive that it will 
meet every case. When it is discovered not 
to meet the wants of some new idea, a new 
postscript amendment patched to it. 

Altogether, this school is as restless and as 
hard to keep fixed on any one course of con- 



The Uneasy Sunday-School. 43 

duct as is the little one-year-old person who 
wakes in the middle of the night, and insists 
on being entertained for two hours. The 
recital of the poem (with toe accompaniment) 
beginning, " This little pig went to market," 
will entertain the youngster for a few mo- 
ments, but must presently be exchanged for 
some other novelty. Stroke the child's head, 
if you please, but that will succeed only for a 
few moments. Your bunch of keys, your 
spectacles, your paper cutter, are successively 
brought into service, and successively laid 
aside. Hold your watch to her ear, being 
careful to keep one end in your hand, for 
after the moment of delight at hearing it tick 
is passed she will let it go with a bang. 
What is perfectly reasonable in a baby 
may be very reprehensible in a Sunday- 
school. 

As the baby, when exhausted with her 
round of entertainment, is apt to go to sleep, 
so the uneasy Sunday-school slumbers at 
those seasons in which no special novelty is 
at hand. As the tendency of all unsteady 
things is to upset, the tottering existence 
which this establishment maintains is no 



44 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

exception to the rule, and threatens to tum- 
ble to an unhappy conclusion. 

The thing needs ballast. Ballast the in- 
dividual teachers and officers, and the school 
will be steady. 



The High-Pressure Sunday-School. 45 



VI. 

ANY thing for excitement. Fuss and 
feathers, gold-lace and brass buttons, 
drums and trumpets, compose the leading 
idea on which this enterprise is urged on- 
ward. It goes as steamboats on the Western 
rivers go when they are running races. All 
the steam is raised that can be carried on. 
All available material is used for fuel, even 
that which is sufficiently valuable to be used 
for other purposes. As the steamboat so 
pushed to a high degree of speed sometimes 
distances all other competing boats, so does 
our Sunday-school get ahead of the other 
schools of the neighborhood. As the boat 
boiler sometimes finishes its career by ex- 
ploding with an inglorious smash, so is the 
high-pressure Sunday-school in danger of 
collapsing, to the injury of its scholars, and to 
the disgrace of the cause of religion. The 
tremendous amount of energy which is ex- 



46 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

pended in getting up extra steam, would 
be better spent in industriously carrying 
on Gods work in a plainer way. 

The ordinary teaching exercises of the 
school are allowed to be subordinate to the 
interests of a speech day, which occurs once 
a month, and which is called the missionary 
afternoon, or once a year, and is called the 
missionary day. Not that the missionary 
cause receives any substantial benefit at any 
of these times, but that " missionary after- 
noon," or "missionary day," is a name which 
has a reputable sound. Teaching and month- 
ly speechifying are as nothing, compared with 
the grandeur of the anniversary exercises, the 
crowning glory of the year, and the great 
event which the children regard very much 
as children in the satin and bespangled walks 
of fashionable life regard the biggest party or 
ball which it may be their privilege to attend 
during the winter. 

The missionary day would seem to suggest 
some idea of an interest in the heathen. 
This, however, is not an inevitable conse- 
quence of the recurrence of that monthly 
festival. Messrs. Tom, Dick, and Harry, the 



The High-Pressure Sunday-School 47 

noted Sunday-school speakers, are present, 
having been invited for the occasion, or hav- 
ing dropped in, in case they should be asked 
to make a few remarks. They are heard 
from, and the " remarks " prove to be what- 
ever was uppermost in the minds of those 
gentlemen ; perhaps the history of George 
Washington and his little hatchet; perhaps 
the story of a child who fell into the fire ; 
perhaps the old narrative of the heathen 
mother throwing her child into the widely 
opened jaws of an able-bodied crocodile ; 
sometimes an old yarn which has been spun 
over and over again for twenty years ; some- 
times an empty novelty which has been in- 
flated for the occasion. Whatever it is, the 
risk is that it is more entertaining than in- 
structing ; more calculated to tickle the fancy 
of the children than to feed them with the 
truths of the Gospel. Some fine singing 
(from which the idea of praise is accident- 
ally omitted) fills up the time ; a collection 
is taken, a sort of fly-blister stimulus having 
been applied to the liberality of the children ; 
they -go home with a sort of confused idea 
that they have heard something, and that 



48 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

• they ought to be better for it; and the mis- 
sionary day comes no more for another 
month. 

The anniversary day is to the monthly ex- 
ercise as the sun is to the moon. " The chil- 
dren and their friends are dazzled Beyond 
measure by the glittering bill of fare which is 
provided. The school is trained in singing 
for this occasion for four months, spending 
each Sunday half an hour or more of the pre- 
cious time which ought to be spent in teach- 
ing. This might not be so bad in itself, if the 
young singers were taught to praise God in 
the singing ; but the object of the singing is 
to make the children sing so as to please the 
congregation which shall be gathered to hear 
them. It is as when fiddlers practice in order 
to fiddle well at a concert, or when bears and 
ponies are trained for a circus exhibition. 
The juvenile dialogue and speech business 
receives its share of patronage. Children 
who had better listen to the wise discourse of 
some good man, are stuffed, almost to burst- 
ing, with a speech or speeches. The exer- 
cises are prolonged, sometimes receiving the 
addition of a tedious or bombastic "report," 



The High-Pressure Sunday- School. 49 

until they are about three times as long 
as they ought to have been ; and when at 
last children, parents, and admiring friends 
go home, it is either with a sense of great 
weariness, or with that uncomfortable feeling 
of mind which is akin to the feeling of body 
caused by overeating at a great dinner or at 
a tea-party. ' 

The school is full ; more than full, it is 
crowded. " Evidence of great prosperity," 
says somebody. Very prosperous, indeed, is 
the condition of the boat whose boiler is so 
overloaded with steam that it may explode 
at any moment. 

It is hardly necessary to speak of the style 
of teaching at this institution of learning. 
Suffice it to say, it is meager, poor, inefficient. 
No child learns a great deal. The teachers 
are not very well up in their lessons, and soon 
get through their work. Beyond the mere 
routine of asking questions out of the ques- 
tion book, not much is done. That is empty 
and barren business. Seed may be sown in 
that way, but the crop will be like the strag- 
gling spires of grass which shoot up between 

the stones of the street pavement — sparse 
4 



50 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

and weak, liable to be destroyed by the first 
footstep. 

Now comes along a grave somebody, who 
shakes his head wisely and says : "There, I 
knew all that ; that is just what all Sunday- 
schools are— mischievous in their tendency, 
ruinous in their results." Stop a moment," 
good sir. This is only the " high-pressure " 
Sunday-school. Admit that this kind of 
school is mischievous and dangerous, and 
then what ? Admit that a steamboat boiler 
does explode — what of it ? Shall we reject 
the whole steamboat system, and carry out 
yet further our view of safety by refusing to 
ride on the railroad, because there is an occa- 
sional smash-up ? Walk, or go on horseback, 
sir, as your forefathers did, (only take care 
that you do not stumble, and that your horse 
does not throw you,) but let us have all the 
modern improvements in conveyance, if you 
please. When the engine gets too hot we 
cool it off a little, and run it under less head 
of steam. When our Sunday-school runs too 
much into the jovial things of this world, and 
neglects its high mission, we need not abol- 
ish the school, but turn its energy in a proper 



The High-Pressure Sunday- School, 51 

direction. It can be done. It has been done. 
It needs to be done in many instances where 
the Sunday-school is suffering from a mere 
worldly prosperity, with an absence of much 
of the real means of grace. 

Brother of the high-pressure school, look 
out for your boiler ! Tame the concern 
down a little, or prepare for an explosion. 



1 



52 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



VII. 

THE religion of Jesus Christ is the glad- 
dest thing on earth. It is not a system 
of penances, or of slavery to rigid enactments. 
It does not imprison its followers in a bond- 
age of legal restrictions, but opens wide to 
them the doors of Gospel freedom. The lib- 
erty with which Christ makes us free is a 
liberty which entitles us to continual and 
grateful joy. 

There have been captives set free from 
dungeons who had, by reason of long impris- 
onment, acquired such a love for their dun- 
geons that they did not know what to do 
with themselves when they were set free. 
There have been slaves who, when they were 
told that they were no longer in bondage, 
but were free to go where they chose and to 
act for themselves, showed such a reluctance 
as to prove themselves entirely unacquainted 
with the advantages of freedom. So there 



The Gloomy Sunday-School. 53 

are people who are in bondage to imaginary 
requirements of Christianity, only because 
they do not practically understand the prin- 
ciples of the redemption with which Christ 
has made them free from the curse of the 
law. These well-meaning but mistaken souls 
prefer to shut themselves down in the dark 
cellar of their own restricted rules of faith, 
rather than, with manly Christian step, to 
walk in the glad- sunshine of true Gospel 
liberty. They "call the Sabbath a delight, 
the holy of the Lord, honorable," and think 
they are not doing their own ways, nor 
finding their own pleasure, while really what 
they call the ways of the Lord are their owii 
substitutes for them, and as for pleasure in 
serving God, it is not itl the list of things 
which they consider excellent. It is a sin 
to make the fires on Sunday, or to wash 
the breakfast dishes ; it is iio sin to be 
cross and dismal on the holy day of glad- 
ness. To help a hymn along with a good 
piano or melddeon would be scandalous ; but 
it is no sin to crack Johnny's knuckles with 
a stick, because the little fellow did whistle 
a few more notes after he heard the chill- 



54 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

ing " Ho-o-o-sh ! Johnny mustn't whistle on 
Sunday ! " 

• It sometimes happens that these cloudy 
persons get possession of the Sunday-school. 
When the leading spirits in the school are 
of this sort we generally see the whole corps 
of the same disposition. Those who take a 
more cheerful view of religious things have 
gone to some more sunshiny establishment. 
Mr. Grim, who is kno^n to be & very good 
man, and one of the pillars of the Church, 
and who therefore thinks it is his duty to 
wear a forbidding countenance, is the su- 
perintendent. He sometimes says pleasant 
words and does pleasant things, but in such 
an austere way that they seem like clothes 
that do not fit. He can pray for twenty min- 
utes without stopping to take breath, and 
says that he prefers that kind of prayer to 
the kind which people hurry over in three or 
four minutes. He is right in telling us that 
we ought not to hurry the prayers, but wrong 
in spinning them out to such a wearisome 
length. His idea of rules and regulations 
is from the Jewish dispensation, and goes 
into considerable depth, into small details, in 



The Gloomy Sunday-School. 55 

which he exacts a rigid obedience. He has 
a great quantity of " constitution and by- 
laws," which he keeps bottled up in suitable 
doses, to be administered to teachers and 
scholars as occasion calls for. His efforts at 
keeping order in school are of the most pon- 
derous description. 

The chorister of this school is a gloomy 
genius, and the singing is doleful business. 
He sings with an unmusical twang, which he 
thinks is an essential element of good music. 
He got it by imitating some forefather who 
could not sing any betten The forefather 
was a good man ; so this man thinks that he 
must sing as that good man sang. He tells 
the children that they must and shall sing, 
and that they are bad children if they do not. 
This is apt to give the children the sulks, 
and to render their vocal exercises more like 
groaning than like the voice of sacred song. 

The children are taught. They are made 
to learn their Bible lessons, and the lessons 
are explained to them. But they learn rather 
to be afraid of God than to love him ; more 
about the terrors of the law than the riches 
of the Saviours grace. They come to school 



56 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

not so much because they like it, as because 
they are taught that they are idle and wicked 
children if they stay at home. 

The library is a battery of solid doctrine. 
Most carefully have all those books been 
excluded which are not. strictly true in point 
of fact of every detail. Story books would 
no more be admitted than would flash novels. 
Even those books which are only " founded 
on fact" are strictly kept out. It was from 
this school that the small boy took the book 
labeled " Five Points," which he supposed 
to be a stirring work on a certain locality in 
the city of New York, but which he discov- 
ered, to his regret, was Dickinson's able little 
treatise on the " Five Points of Calvinism." 
From this school also it was that a little girl , 
took home a " Treatise on Backsliding," which 
she thought would help her to learn to skate 
backward on the ice ! The gloomy Sunday- 
school is not a pleasant place to stay in very 
long. Let us shut the door and run away. 



The Enterprising Sunday- ScJiool. 57 



VIII. 

THE people who manage this Sunday- 
school are not those who regard things 
to be good and pious in proportion as they are 
slow and stupid. They do not, after spending 
a year in doing nothing, hold a great anniver- 
sary, with a secretary's elaborate report of a 
state of unexampled prosperity. Nor is their 
annual report a pitiful wail over the fact that 
they have accomplished nothing during the 
past year, that they mean to accomplish little 
during the year to come, and that, in conse- 
quence, they expect to reap " in due season " 
if they " faint not." Knowing that a crop 
raised after this fashion will be so small that 
its reaping will be light w r ork, they set them- 
selves vigorously to the good work of raising 
such a harvest that when the gathering does 
come it shall be abundantly blessed, and 
shall reward for all the labor and expense of 
sowing, planting, and cultivating. 



58 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

These enterprising laborers' are not hin- 
dered in their work by the knowledge of the 
difficulty and barrenness of the field in which 
their labors are put forth. Instead of getting 
tired over their work, moping over the dis- 
couraging prospects, and assuring each other 
that they will never accomplish any thing, 
they go to work as a good farmer goes, who 
intends to raise a fine crop of corn on a field 
which he finds covered with thistles. The 
ground must be cleared, plowed, manured, 
planted ; and the corn, when it makes its 
appearance above the surface, must be culti- 
vated with careful attention. A farmer does 
not go home howling with pain because the 
thistles have scratched him ; he does not 
whine over the great number of those prickly 
productions, or the remarkable depth of their 
roots ; he does not spend his time in* mourn- 
ing because his corn crop is not matured in 
three weeks from the time he destroyed the 
first thistle ; he does not grumble at the 
money he has spent in his operations. So 
our Sunday-school teachers spend freely their 
time, labor, and money. They know that 
where cheapness is the principal feature, 



The Enterprising Sunday-School. 59 

excellence is likely to be sacrificed. Hand, 
brain, and heart unite in the endeavor to 
build up something which shall be to the 
glory of God, and for the salvation of souls. 
And when it is built up, the work of main- 
taining and cultivating is attended* to with 
unabated vigor and prayerful earnestness. 

In what does true enterprise consist in 
Sunday-school matters ? Each man has his 
different idea. The music man considers 
that the school which has the most singing, 
and that of the best quality, is the one which 
comes up to his standard of enterprise. He 
carries out his views by introducing all the 
latest varieties and novelties in singing, and 
by training his youthful songsters up to the 
highest pitch of squeal, and the noisiest de- 
gree of vociferation. The library man wishes 
the book interest to reign in the school, and 
bends all his energies to the accomplishment 
of his purposes. He whose hobby is punctu- 
ality is persuaded that the school is an enter- 
prising one if no children are behind time ; 
while the foreign missionary agent will quote 
the concern enterprising or slow, according to 
the amount of its contributions to the cause 



60 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

he represents. The truth is, that, while no 
one of these particulars will, in itself, consti- 
tute thorough enterprise, they all combine to 
make it. The really enterprising school ex- 
cels in music, gives liberally, teaches the 
whole Gospel and teaches it thoroughly, has 
a good library, seats its children on decent 
seats, and is punctually attended by a consid- 
erable number of diligent scholars. While it 
fills up its accommodations as largely as 
possible, it does not pirate on the neighbor- 
ing schools merely to swell the list, and then 
boast of the largest number of scholars in the 
place. It enjoys its regular anniversary, but 
does not turn it into a monkey show, or a 
mere exhibition of stuffed and trained chil- 
dren. 

A Sunday-school which runs into mere 
worldly enterprise will not attain a high de- 
gree of prosperity. Many a school has the 
name of being prosperous, whose success is 
nothing but the hollow bubble of worldly 
popularity. Great numbers of scholars may 
be crowded in ; loud screaming may be per- 
formed for music ; twenty benevolent soci- 
eties may be organized, with all the modern 



The Enterprising Sunday- School. 61 

conveniences in constitution and by-laws ; 
but if the spirit of vital godliness is absent, 
the energy which is spent on the work might 
almost as well be bestowed on the running of 
a steamboat, or the development of a new 
gold mining company. " Except the Lord 
build the house, they labor in vain that build 
it." 

God give us a sanctified energy ! May all 
our enterprises be begun in his name, and 
conducted for his glory ! 



62 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



IX. 

NOT a quarrelsome school. Not a series 
of pitched battles between superin- 
tendent and teachers, or between the man- 
teachers and the woman-teachers. Not even 
a state of mutual bickerings, jealousies, and 
snarlings. All that would manifest an ex- 
ceeding want of harmony, and yet it is not 
the style of inharmoniousness which prevails 
in the school before us. 

Suppose your piano is out of tune. You 
employ a man to tune it. Instead of tuning 
every note in the instrument, he selects about 
three fourths of the notes, which he tunes 
admirably, so far as each individual note is 
concerned. He screws up the wires to ex- 
actly the right tension, and as you go over the 
notes which he has tuned, one by one, you pro- 
nounce his work well done. But presently 
you come to the notes whose wires he has 
not touched. You undertake to play a tune 



The Inharmonious Sunday-School. 63 

in which you must use not only the notes 
which he has tuned, but those which he has 
left as they were. But such a shocking tune 
as it is ! Your head aches at the discordant 
performance. The piano is worse than be- 
fore it was tuned. Then it was all equally 
bad ; now it is an unsatisfactory mixture of 
bad and good, in which, though the good is 
the larger, the bad makes the more noise. 

Now, from the piano to a regiment of 
soldiers. Suppose eight soldiers out of ten 
are on drill, and perform the proper evolu- 
tions with the highest degree of skill possi- 
ble. Two out of every ten are in the guard- 
house, or drunk, or absent. The fact that 
the majority do their work rightly makes the 
blundering of the untaught minority all the 
more conspicuous. Those who are not drilled 
are a clog on the regiment when it is in ac- 
tion, or even on a march, and the more the 
colonel proceeds with his instructions in 
drilling, the more does he feel the difficulties 
caused by the want of harmony in the move- 
ments of those of his command, who, through 
having been absent, have not been drilled up 
to the proper standard of excellence, 



64 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

And now from music and soldiery, back 
again to the Sunday-school. We go to the 
teachers' meeting of the inharmonious school, 
and we see at a glance the cause of the 
discordance. There are fifty teachers con- 
nected with the school. They are well-mean- 
ing people, and desire to do right. When 
they meet their classes on the Lord's day they 
teach them to the best of their ability. But 
when we count how many of them are at the 
meeting which is held for the study of the 
lesson, we are obliged to mourn the absence 
of about a dozen — -just enough of a deficiency 
to make the whole concern move along like 
a man who is lame of one leg. The teaching 
power of the word is crippled. Those who 
have been .at the study-meeting go to their 
work on Sunday with 3 feeling of prepara- 
tion to which thp rest are strangers. Those 
who have not been there are apt to come to 
the class in a condition of mental poverty 
which promises small things in the way of 
Gospel education. If all were there, the 
work of teaching the lesson on Sunday would 
go on like music well played on a properly 
tuned instrument. If some meet their chil- 



The Inharmonious Sunday-School. 65 

dren unprepared, the whole school hitches, 
and halts, and stumbles over the defects and 
infirmities, producing a jangling discord in- 
stead of good music; an ignorant retreat 
from the attack of the evil one, rather than 
an unbroken advance to victory over him. 
The whole piano must be tuned. The whole 
regiment must be drilled. The whole body 
of teachers must be booked up on the lesson. 
It would be unfair to say that the teachers' 
study-meeting is the only place for studying 
a lesson, or that no teacher can study a les- 
son by himself. Such a declaration would 
be a distortion of facts. Many a studious 
person can go into his garret, and make 
attainments in biblical science as great as he 
can make in company with his fellow-teach- 
ers. But it is a profitable thing for the teach- 
ers to study in company. Those who have 
an excess of learning nfeed aot stay away 
because of it, but can come and impart a 
little of it to those who are less privileged 
than themselves. Those whose knowledge 
is below the average, can pick up such infor- 
mation as will help them far beyond the help 
which the mere solitary study of the best 



66 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

commentary is likely to afford. Home-study 
need not be neglected. The more of it the 
better. And the more the teacher meets 
with his fellow-teachers, the more is the de- 
sire for home-study stimulated. 

O for schools in perfect harmonious con- 
cert of teaching ! Our schools need a higher 
standard of attainment in this respect. We 
are too easily satisfied with the appearance 
of teaching, which often accomplishes very 
little. We are too willing to allow ourselves 
to go home with an easy conscience, after 
having spent an hour or two in teaching the 
children little or nothing. 

Up with the standard of studious and dili- 
gent harmony in the Sunday-school ! Try 
the study-class, and live up to your duties 
and privileges in it, as regularly as you live 
up to your three meals a day. 



The Inefficient Sunday- School. 67 



X. 
1 inefficient Sunirag-Sc^L 

IT looks like a good school. There seem 
to be plenty of scholars and plenty of 
teachers ; and both teachers and taught seem 
to be in their places. Mr. Chaff, the super- 
intendent, is in his place, and, as he bustles ( 
through the school, seems to be putting forth 
efforts which certainly ought to result in the 
accomplishment of something both great and 
good. There is an air of activity about the 
place which promises largely for lessons 
well learned and recited, and for sound in- 
struction communicated. 

Ask Mr. Chaff how his school is getting 
along. He sighs as he tells us that it is not 
doing at all well; not nearly as well as we 
would think from looking at it. Examine 
the school when you stand up to make a 
speech to it, (which you will be inevitably 
invited to do,) and you will find it deficient 
in several respects. Though a crowd of 



68 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

teachers and scholars may be there ; though 
they seem to be well organized ; though they 
have an anniversary every year, with an ex- 
hibition of stuffed and trained children — yet 
the influence of the school in the Church and 
neighborhood is hardly felt, and the results 
attained in religious instruction are exceed- 
ingly slender. 

Mr. Chaff is a man of some enterprise, con- 
siderable enthusiasm, and a little experience. 
t He started with the idea of making a great 
Sunday-school. He was determined to have 
the largest school in the neighborhood. So 
he scooped up all the children he could find, 
and pressed all the people who could be per- 
suaded to go, into the business of teaching 
them. In vain did any urge that they had 
no gift for teaching, and no ability to interest 
the children. He told them that every body 
ought to teach, whether they can or not. So 
they came. Mr. Spoon is there, vainly trying 
to make his boys behave themselves. Mrs. 
Sour has administered discipline to her class 
until she has seriously thinned it out. Mr. 
Poke talks to his children until they are tired 
of him. ■ Mr. Draggle proses on in the same 



The Inefficient Sunday- School. 69 

weary way/ Sabbath after Sabbath, till his 
boys have almost come to the conclusion 
that they will stay away. Messrs. Bright- 
eyes, Hopeful, and Smart are there too, 
doing all they* can with their classes, but real- 
izing that it is up-hill work to teach among 
so many people who do not understand the 
art and science of teaching. If Mr. Chaff 
would instruct these kind people, so as to 
make good teachers out of them, it would be 
well. If the pastor would show them how to 
teach, it would be better still, for he knows 
something about teaching, which Mr. Chaff 
does not. But Chaff says he has not the 
time, and the pastor, having other things to 
do, stays away from the school altogether, 
except on anniversary occasions, when he is 
on hand to announce the speakers, and to 
congratulate all concerned, on the success of 
the school. 

As may be supposed, the scholars in this 
school understand but little about the Bible. 
If the lesson is eight verses long, those eight 
verses are tolerably well learned ; but no 
reference is made to other parts of the Bible 
which throw light upon them. The corre- 



70 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

spondence between the parts of* Scripture is 
never learned. The beautiful light which the 
Old and New Testament throw on each 
other is never seen, because nobody takes 
the trouble to look for it. When the chil- 
dren are asked to turn to a passage in the 
sacred book* they find it without much delay, 
if it is a passage in common use ; but if it is 
one seldom used — in the Minor Prophets, for 
instance— some time will be consumed be- 
fore it is found, The acquaintance with the 
truths taught in the Bible is as slight; the 
labors of the teachers in many instances 
being confined to reading the lesson over, 
and asking the large-print questions in the 
question book. This, it is true, is better than 
no teaching, but it is just as well to have 
more thorough instruction if it can be had. 

The teachers had a meeting for the study 
of the lesson. It was held once a week, and 
lasted for four weeks. Mr. Chaff presided. 
He came very empty, and fed his fellow- 
laborers on husks, instead of showing them 
the things which they needed to be shown, 
about the lesson. The teachers concluded 
that they would not come any more. So the 



The Inefficient Sunday- School. ♦ 71 

» 

teaching-meeting faded out. The theory is, 
that the teachers spend Saturday evening in 
the study of the lesson : the practice is, that 
they spend that evening in some other way. 
The pastor has been asked to take charge of 
this teaching-meeting, but he has an idea 
that the teachers will not come to it. 

There is something the matter with the 
singing. It is faint. It creaks. It drags. 
It lacks that joyous ring that Sunday-school 
singing ought to have. The principal dif- 
ficulty is, that the teachers leave it all to 
the children, instead of helping them. The 
11 singing man," after spending considerable 
time in determining which hymn he will give 
out, and in groping through the hymn book 
for it, says " The children will please sing the 
hymn on the 124th page." It does not occur 
to the grown people that the invitation is to 
them, and so they quietly hold the books in 
their hands, but make no sound. 

And there is something the matter with 
the praying. The long, rambling prayer 
which is uttered is very listlessly attended to, 
if it is attended to at all. There is a lack of 
earnestness. There is no perceptible spirit 



72 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

of devotion. Nobody thinks so far ahead as 
to give any thought about whether the prayer 
will be answered or not. The man whojhas 
offered it does not feel, when it is over, that 
he has been asking for any thing in particu- 
lar. There is no response in the hearts of 
either teachers or scholars. 

Ah ! there is the great difficulty. The 
school needs the spirit of prayer. It is a 
prayerless school, and that is the reason it 
has accomplished nothing. And until it is 
thoroughly baptized with the Holy Spirit, it 
will accomplish nothing. Pray, teachers and 
scholars. And when the blessing descends 
in answer to such earnest prayer, the careless 
teacher will wake up to a full sense of his 
responsibility ; the dull scholar, too, will be 
aroused ; the whole company of teachers and 
taught will be quickened into life ; and the 
school, no longer inefficient, will become a 
useful instrument in Gods hand of promoting 
his glory. 



The Worn-Out Sunday-School. . 73 



XL 
W§t Wioxn-^ut Stfnimg-S^nwL 

THE church with which this unfortunate 
Sunday-school is connected is a hand- 
some edifice in the heart of the city, with a 
stately brown steeple above it, pointing up to 
heaven, and a cellar underneath, dug out 
four and a half feet below the level of the 
pavement. As the use of the steeple is to 
direct people's thoughts heavenward, so the 
cellar is useful to remind us that we yet have 
intimate relations with this lower earth. 
Besides this, the basement is useful for ac- 
commodating the furnace, the coal cellar, 
and the Sunday-school. 

Some years ago, notwithstanding the un- 
ventilated quarters in the basement, the Sun- 
day-school was tolerably prosperous. Those 
modern improvements, which are now consid- 
ered so necessary, had not been introduced 
ir^to the neighboring schools and churches, 
and the children were satisfied with what 



74 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

was furnished them. The spirit of enterprise 
which is now so thoroughly infused into most 
schools, had not then been much thought of. 
The membership of the Church was large, 
the attendance good, and the juvenile depart- 
ment seemed to prosper in proportion. But 
now the Sunday-school cellar has a deserted 
appearance. There are hardly enough chil- 
dren on the roll to take the chill off the place. 
It is also difficult to get a sufficient number 
of teachers to attend to the limited number 
who are to be instructed. The superintendent 
(the same who has been in office for twenty 
years) plods on his weary way, wondering all 
the time what is the matter, and why the 
school should be decreasing in numbers and 
in interest, while the neighborhood is becom- 
ing every year more densely populated. 

A singular circumstance, having some con- 
nection with the wearing out of this old Sun- 
day-school is the fact that some distance out 
in the suburbs this Church has a mission 
school. The suburban effort is successful, 
while the old concern languishes, and seems 
ready to die. The youth and energy of tfre 
Church have gone to the new enterprise, 



The Worn-Oat Sunday- School. 75 

while the more venerable people have 
stood by the original establishment. The 
mission school is crowded. There is no 
trouble in securing the services of an 
abundance of teachers. The teachers 
walk a mile to the mission, and their zeal 
carries them to the performance of their 
duty even in stormy or hot weather. When 
the two schools meet, on anniversary occa- 
sions, the old school seems to be merely an 
appendage of the new one. At such festivals 
the mission scholars do the bulk of the sing- 
ing, while the members of the worn-out 
school open their mouths to the carefully 
graduated distance permitted by old-time pro- 
priety, and send forth a faint sort of refined 
imitation of music. 

Why is all this ? How came the church- 
school to its present worn-out condition ? 

The history is simple. Old Mr. Plodham- 
mer, the superintendent, is not only set in his 
ways, but a person of considerable dignity 
and reserve. He has fulfilled the require- 
ments of the office, as a stern foreman per- 
forms his duties in a factory. As the factory 
operatives feel that the foreman's business is 



y6 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

to see that each man does work enough, and 
of the right kind, so the teachers looked on 
the good Mr. Plodhammer as their overseer 
and taskmaster. They stood in awe of him. 
They could no more feel themselves on an 
equality with him, than the involuntary labor- 
ers on an old South Carolina plantation 
could enjoy an equality with the gentleman 
who used to stand over them with a big whip 
in his hand, to encourage them in cultivating 
cotton. But the teachers felt a freedom to 
leave the service which the dusky-skinned 
Carolinians did not, in olden times, enjoy, 
and took advantage of their freedom by bid- 
ding farewell to the rigid old school with its 
forbidding administration. They made the 
most of their liberty by setting up the subur- 
ban mission-school. Plodhammer and a few 
of his adherents kept the same old rut that 
they originally traveled, and by this time 
have worn it so deep that there is but little 
probability that they will ever drive out of it. 
The younger members make no complaints 
against Mr. Plodhammer's piety or his sin- 
cerity. They only think that he and they 
'cannot work together, He knows that he 



The Worn-Out Sunday- School. 77 

has driven them off, but would as soon enter- 
tain a proposition for the sale or abandon- 
ment of the church, as for his retirement 
from the office which he has so long held. 

It is a pity that the matter stands so. If 
the young and middle-aged persons who are 
at Vork in the mission school were back 
again in their old places in the Church, the 
original Sunday-school might be a large and 
prosperous one. The suburban enterprise 
could wisely be put into other hands, and 
both might go on and flourish. But young 
and old have become estranged from each 
other, and there is every prospect that the 
estrangement will be permanent. 

There is plenty of energy in b«>th places. 
Aggressive energy in the new institution ; in 
the old, that sort of energy which exhausts 
itself in holding an old position for the sake 
of its age, and in proving that worn-out 
things are as good as new, rather than taking 
the trouble so to improve them as to adapt 
them to modern wants and demands. Both 
are very sure they are right. Both are weak- 
ening the Church : the one, by going off; the 
other, by staying and being disagreeable. 



78 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

The worn-out school can be reinvigorated 
and increased and renovated. If pastor and 
people, superintendent and teachers, old and 
young, will heartily go to work upon it, ex- 
tracting that which is obsolete and useless, 
and introducing such wise and decent reforms 
as are calculated to promote the efficiency of 
the school, and to coax stray children into it, 
they will probably develop an amount of 
vitality which wilt astouild them and all their 
old friends. 



The Hotel Sunday- School. 79 



XII. 

THIS school has no such connection with 
a hotel as might be inferred from its 
name. It might be a good thing if some 
of the great hotels, which seem to be min- 
iature worlds within themselves, had a little 
more of the means of grace than they have. 
Some of the larger ones are frequently«as 
populous as many a little village in which 
three or four half-starved Churches, of as 
many denominations, compete for a beggarly 
existence. The big hotel might have a chap- 
el, a Sunday-school, and a chaplain* or hotel 
missionary, if it wanted to. 

But there is not much use of pointing out 
what # means of grace the hotel might have, 
until we can demonstrate to the hotel pro- 
prietor that it would pay. As there is not 
much probability of that, we will turn to 
what we may very properly call " The Hotel 
Sunday-School." 



80 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

Hotel life differs from ordinary domestic 
life principally in the fact, that the people at 
the hotel stay but a little time, while those 
who keep house make it a more permanent 
business. The hotel lodgers keep their ef- 
fects in trunks, so as to be ready for a start 
at brief notice ; while at our homes we arrange 
ourselves and our things as if we expect to 
remain there for a considerable time. 

The prominent feature of the school before 
us is, that the scholars keep coming and go- 
ing, very much as the guests do at a hotel. 
The population of a great hotel, let us say, is 
one thousand souls. Of these not over five 
hundred have been there a week. Many are 
there only for a night's lodging. Some have 
been there six months ; while a few, very few, 
have been making it their permanent home 
for some years. So in the school. Here are 
a few scholars who have been there almost 
from infancy, but the majority are new faces. 
Some, principally boys, (for the girls are 
more steady,) come in and stay a few weeks 
to see how they like it. They don't like 
it at all, and off they go to another, as from 
the Metropolitan Hotel to the Fifth Avenue, 



The Hotel Sunday- School. 81 

or from the Black Bear to the White Boar. 
They have formed no attachment ; they ex- 
perience no more regret at leaving than 
does the traveler who gives the order, " Bag- 
gage down from number three hundred and 
twenty." When some special attraction is 
announced, this Sunday-school fills up so 
rapidly that its managers talk about the ne- 
cessity of larger apartments. But they find 
that as soon as the novelty is over, the ne- 
cessity no longer exists. A picnic, if widely 
announced, will crowd the school for a few 
weeks. A promise of a book to each scholar 
will serve as bait to many a young pilgrim, 
until the distribution has actually taken place. 
A magic-lantern show will create unparal- 
leled enthusiasm ; as ephemeral, however, as 
the brilliant pictures which pass in rapid suc- 
cession before the eyes of the delighted spec- 
tators. The regular exercises of the school 
seem to excite very little more attention 
from these transient scholars than the figures 
on the hotel carpets, or the frescoes on the 
hotel wall, awaken in the sleepy traveler who 
comes in about bedtime, and goes away as 

soon as he has breakfasted. 
G 



82 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

What is the matter ? Why don't the chil- 
dren stay ? The difficulty is, simply, that the 
school has never been sufficiently interesting 
to induce them to remain long. There is an 
absence of home comfort, and consequently 
of home feeling. When a new comer ar- 
rives, no special notice is taken of him beyond 
placing him in a class, putting the customary 
books into his hands, and expecting him to 
answer certain questions which are asked 
him out of the question book. And when 
he leaves, his name is scratched from superin- 
tendent's roll-book and from teacher's class- 
book — if such records exist — without follow- 
ing him up, or taking any further action than 
to wonder if he has gone to some other 
school, and why. Whole classes sometimes 
emigrate from one Sunday-school to another 
in this fashion. Last year there were one 
hundred scholars. Now there are about the 
same number ; forty of them are new ones. 
Why are there not a hundred and forty ? 
Because the number of those who straggled 
away is about equal to the number of the 
new comers. The worst of the straggling is, 
that the larger boys and girls are the ones 



The Hotel Sunday- School. 83 

who go. If we were certain that they went 
to another school, that might be some mit- 
igation of our sorrow at losing them, though 
it would be vastly better that they should 
stick to their own school. But they have 
gone, and now they are outside of all relig- 
ious privileges whatever. Had pains been 
taken to keep them, by affectionately teach- 
ing them and thoroughly and prayerfully 
educating them, they might have remained 
to succeed the teachers who have let them 
go, when, in their turn, they shall grow weary 
and slip away themselves. 

We must take hold of our scholars with a 
firmer grasp, so as to keep them. Not to 
"hold them uneasy," and make them stay 
because they have to, and cannot get away, 
but to tie them with cords of love ; to teach 
them in such a way that they see they are 
learning something ; to make them enjoy 
what fhey learn ; and, above all things, to 
show them that we feel an earnest desire for 
the salvation of their souls. 

The more we study our Bible ; the more 
we are baptized with the Spirit of Divine 
grace ; the more we ask God to show us how 



84 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

to teach these young people the way of 
truth; the better we shall succeed in in- 
teresting them in their Sunday-school to 
such an extent that they cannot be enticed 
away from it. " 



The Underground Sunday-School. 85 



XIII. 

IT is a pity to put living children below 
the level of the ground, even if for pur- 
poses of religious education. Cellars are 
good places for coal, furnace, and the old 
rubbish which accumulates about almost 
every church, They are bad plages to put 
Sunday-school children in. 

Although the fashion has changed some* 
what in thirty years, and it is more custom- 
ary now than then to build Sunday-school 
rooms above ground, yet there are many 
schools held in damp and uncomfortable 
basements. Sometimes it is for economy 
that a church is built with a cellar beneath 
it for the lecture-room and. Sunday-school. 
Sometimes the church is so constructed be- 
cause the building committee have been 
in the habit, ever since they were little boys, 
of worshiping in a church of this fashion. 
Sometimes, in cities, where ground is so 



86 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

costly that every inch counts, it is impossible 
to build the Sunday-school alongside of the 
church, or behind it, and the idea does not 
occur to the builders that the congregation 
can walk up a short flight of steps to reach 
the main floor. So the cellar is scooped out, 
five feat below the level of the pavement, and 
the big people have that much less distance 
to climb into church. Whatever apology 
may be made for such a contrivance in a 
densely built city, there is no excuse for a 
Sunday-school cellar to a country church, 
where land is plenty and cheap. 

We descend into the basement to see and 
hear the Sunday-school. The stone walls 
which are on the sides of the alley-way by 
which we enter, are richly adorned with a nat- 
ural robe of living green ;— not the graceful 
festooning with which the young ladies adorn 
the inner walls about Christmas time, but the 
coat of velvety fungus which will inevitably 
make its appearance on stone in damp places. 
Sunshine comes into this moldy cranny for 
the space of half an hour each bright day, 
not long enough to dry it and make it cheer- 
ful. The clammy moisture which exudes 



The Underground Sunday- School. 87 

from the brick pavement is more suggestive 
of a county jail, than of a pleasant place for 
religious education. The wood-work of the 
doors and windows is decaying, and the paint 
is leaving the surface. The place is so dark 
that the sexton cannot see to wash the win- 
dows, which are spattered with the mud 
which the rain has beaten up against them. 
The drainage is so poor that a plank nine 
inches wide is provided to keep the children's 
feet out of the inch a'nd a half of water which 
settles there after each rain storm. 

Inside, the scene is not particularly cheer- 
ful. The ceiling is only eight feet high, and 
is smoked by the gaslights which are kept 
burning while the school is in session. The 
light, being partly from the gas-burners and 
partly from the dimmed daylight which 
comes through #ie windows, is an unwhole- 
some mixture of natural and artificial, which 
is very hard on the eyes. The floor yields 
under us as we walk on it. The reason of 
this is, that the joists are laid either direct- 
ly on the ground, or so close to it that the 
dampness from the ground has rotted them. 
The rotting, too, has extended to the under- 



88 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

neath side .of the flooring boards. But, like 
the shepherd boy who sang, " He that is 
down need fear no fall," the people of this 
school cannot tumble very far, even if the 
floor does give way. The danger is not of 
broken bones from a sifdden descent, but 
from ruined lungs from atmosphere viti- 
ated by the decaying timber. The whole 
establishment has a choky appearance and 
feeling. 

The place is crowded. This is looked on 
by those who manage it as an evidence of 
prosperity, But the fact is, that the more 
children you crowd into such a cellar the 
less they will prosper. You may paint the 
wood-work every three months ; whitewash 
or fresco the walls as cheerfully as possible ; 
scrape off the green mold as fast as it accu- 
mulates ; but it is like removing pimples from 
the face by the application of ointments and 
washes. You may extemporize a beauty by 
these cosmetics, but so long as the blood is 
impure the disorder remains, and will cause 
the unsightly effects which display themselves 
on the exterior. Nothing will make a damp - 
basement fit for a crowd of children tQ meet 



The Underground Sunday- School. 89 

in it, but a total removal of the causes which 
produce its dampness and its unhealthiness. 
And if the Church will open its eyes to the 
modern inventions and improvements which 
the world has made in architecture, ventila- 
tion, and comfort, it will no longer permit 
its children to be educated in musty under- 
ground apartments. 

Ought we, then, to abandon our basement 
Sunday-school rooms ? Yes, wherever it is 
possible to meet above ground. If that is 
impossible, the basement should be so con- 
trived as to be free from the evils mentioned. 
Let there be a space of at least fifteen inches 
between the floor-beams and the earth be- 
low, and that space well ventilated and 
drained. Let the windows be large enough 
to admit so much daylight that there will be 
no occasion to burn gas in the daytime. Let 
the ceiling be at least twelve feet high, even 
if the congregation are obliged, in conse- 
quence, to ascend three or four steps more 
than they would if the basement room were 
only a low dungeon. And let the school- 
room be so well ventilated that no child shall 
have its health destroyed by inhaling poison- 



go Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

ous effluvia, which should be driven into the 
outer air. 

The dungeon at Rome, in which the 
Apostle Paul is said to have been confined, 
is two stories under ground, with massive 
stone walls, and a considerable degree of 
dampness. The apostle enjoyed a high state 
of spiritual fervor in this place, if we may 
judge by his second epistle to Timothy ; but 
we do not find that he went there from 
choice, or that he recommended other Chris- 
tians to select such apartments for their 
places of worship, or for the education of 
their children, if better accommodations could 
be procured. 

Let us have the best that can be had. Let 
us enjoy the liberty which the Gospel of 
Christ 'gives us, and thank God for all the 
sunshine and purity to which it entitles us. 



The Unvcntilated Sunday- School. 91 



XIV. 
t WLnhmtxMtb Sunimg-Sx:|j00L 



STATISTICS are so vexatious to a great 
many people, that there is Jittle use of 
printing two or three pages of them right 
here to prove that pois'oned air is a very 
unwholesome article to take into the lungs. 

If foul air were black, brown, or some 
other dingy color, so that we could see it in 
all its unloveliness 7 we should be more dili- 
gent in protecting ourselves against its attacks 
than we are. We look clear through it, and 
breathe the horrible compound, thinking but 
little about it until it nearly asphyxiates us ; 
and then we begin to think that possibly the 
sexton has not attended to his duty. 

Poor sexton ! Suffering creature ! Bearer 
of the burdens of thoughtless architects, stu- 
pid building committees, tiresome teachers, 
dull preachers, and sleepy hearers and schol- 
ars ! The boys tease him ; the superintend- 
ent scolds him ; the treasurer forgets to pay 



92 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

him ; the trustees threaten to turn him out, 
that they may get a better one ; and who 
ever thinks of praying for him in prayer- 
meeting? It is generally considered his 
fault if the Sunday-school room is not fur- 
nished with pure air. Though there may be 
no facilities provided for the admission of 
that requisite to successful teaching, still the 
wretched sexton is expected to supply it. 
No wonder he is sometimes cross! 

"Do not sin against the child!" Joseph 
was put into a pit. The men who put him 
there thought his bones would be picked by 
jackals. We put our children into unven- 
tilated school rooms, to be nibbled at by the 
sharp tooth of a disease-laden atmosphere, 
which has, in many instances, been breathed 
over and over again till it is well-nigh putrid. 

A few of our churches are well ventilated. 
These are not always the most beautiful or 
the most costly. There are magnificent piles 
of expensive architectural devices, which are 
not furnished with so much as an auger hole 
for the admission of fresh air and the exit 
of that which has been used. Some stately 
church buildings are ventilated in their main 



t The Unventilated Sunday-School. 93 

audience rooms, but not in the Sunday-school 
apartments. Some are furnished with ample 
ventilation fc>oth for audience-room and Sun- 
day-school, but none for the primary depart- 
ment. The contrivers of these buildings 
probably thought (if, indeed, they gave the 
subject any thought at all) that the lungs of 
the infant-class children were so small as not 
to -need any fresh air at all. 

In many Sunday-schools, and other public 
halls, the only ventilation is by lowering the 
window-sashes from the top, or raising them 
from below, or both. This verily admits fresh 
air, but in such a way as to make a draft on 
somebody's head, and send him home with 
rheumatism, catarrh, or stiff neck. Even this 
window-sash ventilation is better than none, 
for the sexton (much-abused being) can, if 
he will, open the sashes as soon as the room 
is cleared of its occupants, and let the fresh 
breeze blow through. Common rumor says 
that this is sometimes done, though I never 
saw it done with any regularity, except in 
one church. A little heat is lost by doing it, 
which, at present price of coal, is an objection 
to some thrifty church trustees. In many 



94 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. f 

churches and Sunday-schools the stale air is 
as carefully kept over from week to week, as 
if there were a wholesome odor of religious 
truth in it. The fact is, it gets preached to 
so often that it ought to be much better than 
it is. Were it attar of roses, or preserved 
pomegranates, it could not be canned up 
much more carefully than it is. 

Here is the Sunday-school of a prosperous 
Church, just rejoicing in the possession of a 
new edifice. There is brown stone on the 
front, several inches thick, and stucco on the 
sides ; so as to make it look stylish. The 
stained glass in the windows lets in a light 
which is far more dim than religious. The 
upper sanctuary is quite gorgeous, and has 
several ventilation holes which allow the stale 
air to seek lodgings in the space between the 
ceiling and the roof. The school-room is 
sacrificed to the audience-room of the church, 
being directly underneath it, with its floor 
about two feet below the level of the ground. 
The school-room ceiling is ten feet high, and 
there are no visible means of ventilation. 
The superintendent is delighted with the 
new quarters. He goes round from visitor 



The Unventilated Sunday- School. 95 

to visitor, rubbing his hands with joy, and his 
merry face beaming with that pleasure which 
every man knows who has a good thing, and 
likes to show it to his friends. 

" How many children have you here to- 
day ? " asks a plain-spoken old visitor. 

" We have about five hundred," replies the 
superintendent ; " but I think we can squeeze 
in two or three more classes. We aint quite 
full yet." 

" May the good Lord forgive you for put- 
ting five hundred children into this unven- 
tilated apartment, then," says the bluff old 
man. 

And a coolness springs up between him 
and the superintendent, because he is un- 
willing to praise the lack of ventilation in the 
school. 

I had to go into a church Sunday-school 
in one of the large manufacturing towns of 
Pennsylvania. It was a dismal February aft- 
ernoon ; three or four inches of slush on the 
pavement, and rain falling rapidly. The floor 
of the school-room was about six feet under 
ground, which is the depth to which grave- 
diggers dig graves. The windows were closed 



g6 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

and the stove was red hot. Quite a large 
number of children were present. Wet boots 
and dripping umbrellas added to the discom- 
fort and dampness of the room. The con- 
densed moisture stood thick on the window- 
panes, and ran down in streaks. The children 
perspired, and looked uncomfortable. The 
teachers seemed weary, and, to judge from 
appearances, all the teaching done in that 
room on that day would have been dear at a 
valuation of two cents. I was to have ad- 
dressed these asphyxiated creatures. But 
what was the use ? They were not in a frame 
of mind or body in which I could possibly 
have done them any good. I should have 
gone to sleep, and choked over # my speech. 
I gasped for breath, and they were at least 
as badly off as I was, for they had been in 
the den longer. I asked to be excused, and 
made for the door, advising the superintend- 
ent to dismiss school as early as possible. I 
afterward learned that he kept his unven- 
tilated company there for some time longer, 
and made a speech to them himself, to make 
good my lack of service, as he said a speech 
had been promised them. That man would 



The Unventilatcd Sunday- School. 97 

make a speech in the receiving vault of a 
cemetery, if he had a chance ; but there is 
probably no vault in the country whose at- 
mosphere could be worse than the noxious 
mixture which was defiling the lungs of the 
inmates of that Sunday-school dungeon. I 
have since learned that a new house of wor- 
ship has been erected to take the place of the 
one from whose cellar I rushed that dismal 
Sunday afternoon. 

Nor is it only fresh air that we want in our 
Sunday-school rooms. We need fresh light 
We do not want the light that has grown 
stale, and musty, and weary,* in going round 
the corners of smoky chimneys, and elbow- 
ing its way down into the basement windows 
through narrow passages between gloomy 
walls. We ask for the direct rays of sun- 
shine. Grown-up men of business who pay 
great rents for basement offices in Wall- 
street, into whose moldy recesses the direct 
rays of the sun never enter, find themselves 
growing prematurely old, haggard, nervous, 
and unable to find pleasure in attending to 
business. No amount of pecuniary gain can 
compensate a man for thus wearing himself 



98 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

out before his time. The men who do it do 
not treat their horses or dogs as they treat 
themselves. They give the beasts all the 
sunshine they want. Some of the exhausted- 
looking sets of horse-bones which languidly 
pull our city street-cars, drag out a miserable 
existence in unventilated underground sta- 
bles. Henry Bergh has done much for the 
suffering horse. Now let us plead for sun- 
shine and pure air in the rooms where our 
children are taught about the light and the 
purity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Let us walk in the light. Clean away the 
cobwebs, the dust, and the absurd dark- 
stained glass from our religion and from our 
windows. Purify the musty cellar whose 
dampness and decay is rotting the under 
side of the floor-boards, and sending up its 
unseen death-message to lodge in the lungs 
of our children. Up ! out of the gloom and 
dampness, into sunshine, and health, and joy! 



The Sunshiny Sunday-School, 99 



XV. 

IT is a pleasure to go to this Sunday- 
school. The children do not wearily 
drag themselves to it as to a dull meeting 
from which they would rather stay away, nor 
do they make unpleasant faces at the thought 
of going, as they do when they are spoken to 
about going to the dentist's. While the du- 
ties of the school are going on, the children 
are not devoting their chief energies to tak- 
ing observations of the clock to see if it is 
time to go home. 

The apartment in which" this school is held 
is as pleasant and comfortable as modern art 
can make it. The windows are large enough 
to admit plenty of light, and the panes of 
glass are kept clean enough to let the light 
come through. The walls are neatly white- 
washed or colored, and are adorned wfth 
such pictures and maps as are both beautiful 
to look at and useful in helping the young 



ioo Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

people to understand their lessons. The 
children are not asked to sit on fence-rails, 
or other unhandy contrivances of uncom- 
fortable lumber, but are seated on benches 
adapted to the sizes and shapes of the beings 
who are to sit on them. Little folks, whose 
legs are eleven inches long from the knee to 
the heel, are not told to make themselves 
comfortable on seats which are sixteen 
inches from the floor. The heating and ven- 
tilating apparatus is in good order. The 
children are not sickened with foul air, nor 
suffocated with smoke from chimneys which 
do not draw. 

The conduct of the exercises is of the most 
pleasant character. No rod of grim tyranny 
is held over the children to scare religion 
into them, but they are guided and held with 
the strong cords of affectionate interest. 
They engage in the prayer much better than 
the children of the Sunday-school in the next 
street, where the teachers do their praying 
with only one eye shut, watching with the 
otner eye to see if some undevout boy does 
not need a rap on the head. They sing more 
cheerfully than if they were driven to their 



The Sunshiny Sunday- School. 101 

singing, and told " There, now, sing, will 
you ? " They read the Bible, or listen to its 
reading, with all the more interest when the 
superintendent gives an occasional pleasant 
explanation, or makes use of the maps or 
pictures on the walls to illustrate some truth 
which is before them. They even like the 
Catechism, because it is given to them in a 
way which makes it interesting. 

The teachers who teach in this school 
seem to do their work from a hearty love of 
it. Mrs. Sour has no class now ; she left 
some time ago, because she thought there 
was hardly enough solemnity about the 
school. Mr. Grump left about the same time, 
his feelings having been hurt about some- 
thing. The teachers who remain are happier 
without these friends. They come with 
cheerful faces and pleasant smiles. Knowing 
that what they have to tell the children is 
the most delightful message that can be 
sounded in mortal ears,?they go to the work 
with the spirit of those who convey good 
news. They have not come to worry the 
children, or to cross-examine them, as sharp 
lawyers examine witnesses, but to inform and 



102 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

instruct them, to make them love to obey 
God, and to learn the truths of the Bible. 
The operation of teaching is not merely 
hearing them say a lesson which they have 
learned, or are supposed to have learned, at 
home ; but it is to tell them and teach them 
all about the truths contained in the lesson. 
The manner of teaching is not such as to 
make them hate the # Bible, the teacher, and 
the whole concern ; but such as to make them 
wish such instruction would last all day, and 
to cause them to love their teachers with a 
degree of affection exceeded only by that 
which they feel for their own blood relations. 
The teachers feel a pleasure in studying 
their lesson, so as to be well prepared when 
they come to the children with it. Instruc- 
tion gladly gained is gladly imparted, and it 
proves to be less trouble to be regular at 
school, and to teach the class, than to groan 
over the work of studying, or to neglect 
preparation because*of the time it consumes. 
Every body seems to like the superintend- 
ent. The children like him as he stands in 
the desk ; as he pats them on the head when 
he comes around among the classes ; as he 



The Sunshiny Sunday- School. 103 

meets them with a pleasant smile in the 
street. Nobody ever heard him complain of 
his work, or look dismal because he had so 
much to do. He has a happy faculty of 
keeping order without scolding, or banging a 
stick against the desk, or protractedly ringing 
a big bell. We never hear that the teachers 
rebel against his authority, or complain that 
he governs them too severely. And yet he 
rules, with a pretty firm hand. He is a good 
disciplinarian. He secures punctuality and 
order better than some people do who are 
very cross and overbearing in their way of 
doing what they want to do. Of course, the 
superintendent enjoys his work. 

But there is something in the cheerfulness 
of this school which is far above fixtures, 
pleasant apartment, or even smiling faces. 
And . that is the fact that the children are 
taught salvation through Jesus Christ. They 
are taught that the Christian religion is the 
most joyful thing this side of heaven. They 
are full of it, and they come to school not 
only to be entertained, not only to sing fine 
music, not only to see their friends, but to 
enjoy hearing the wonders of redeeming love. 



104 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

A secular school can be conducted pleas- 
antly, and teachers and scholars may enjoy 
themselves in it. But the best school, where 
the learning of this world is taught, comes 
very far . short of the school where souls are 
trained for everlasting glory. 

The Lord teach us how to enjoy our re- 
ligion, so as to make those whom we instruct 
enjoy it with us ! 



A Very Peculiar Sunday-School. 105 



XVI. 

I HAD never supposed that just such a 
Sunday-school existed in the State of 
New York. It was so near being no Sun- 
day-school, that every body who visited it 
naturally raised the question why it was held 
at all. 

It was in a district school-house, pleasantly 
situated in one of the most beautiful sections 
of the State, not fifty miles from the capital. 
A little party of tourists visited it on a bright 
summer afternoon, expecting to find it in full 
blast. 

The principal part of the school was its 
venerable superintendent. He was a godly 
man of over eighty years of age ; as sincere 
a Christian as one would want to meet, and 
as incompetent a person as ever was put in 
charge of an educational interest. We could 
not learn who put him into the office, or 
indeed who, besides himself, were responsible 



106 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

for the management of the school. Probably 
he rolled into the superintendency years ago 
because there was nobody else to fill the 
office, and, having rolled into it, there was 
nobody to roll him out. 

School nominally commenced at three 
o'clock. We entered, in the capacity of 
spectators, at twenty minutes past three, and 
found the superintendent, three scholars, and 
several visitors. There was nobody present 
who seemed to have come with a view of 
teaching a class. 

Three more scholars gradually came in, 
and some more spectators. A large bundle 
of miscellaneous papers had been sent by 
some kind friend, and the chief work of the 
day was to distribute them. The old gentle- 
man attended to this in person, asking the 
advice of the spectators as to what was best 
to be done with them. It was a tedious 
business 1 ; some of the papers were well suited 
to the wants of the children, and some were 
not. It was evident from the way he distrib- 
uted them, that no thoughts of fitness or 
unfitness entered his head, and that he would 
have just as faithfully given out Police Ga~ 



A Very Peculiar Sunday- School. 107 

zcttes^ or any other inappropriate kind of lit- 
erature, if such had been sent to him. 

The next work in order was the singing of 
a hymn, for which service he called on any 
who might be present to sing any thing they 
pleased. Somebody did so, and the song of 
praise feebly worked its way onward through 
several verses, to a gasping conclusion. 

Next, the superintendent proceeded to 
read a chapter in the Bible. He commenced 
by asking the spectators if they had any 
objection to such an exercise. Finding none, 
he asked if they had any preference as to the 
chapter. No preference was expressed, and 
he said that, if it made no odds, he guessed 
he would read the eighth chapter of Romans. 
He and the spectators proceeded with this 
chapter, reading it antiphonally. The read- 
ing was well done. The old man had evi- 
dently learned that magnificent chapter by 
heart when he was a boy. He knew espe- 
cially the last verses so well, that he threw 
considerable unction into them. After this 
was done, he made " a few remarks," then 
inviting more contributions from the specta- 
tors, in the way of sacred song. These hav- 



108 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

ing been given, he said he guessed the 
preacher would be along before a great while, 
and perhaps we had better wait. We waited, 
and the preacher came. He took his seat 
behind the desk of the - schoolmaster, and 
then preacher and hearers waited in silence 
for full ten minutes. During these minutes 
school was gradually and silently dissolving 
into church. The operation was so quiet 
that hardly anybody could tell exactly where 
school ended and church began. 

It is difficult to conceive of any thing in 
the way of religious effort more inefficiently 
operated than this so-called Sunday-school. 
There was nothing in the way of instruction, 
nothing calculated to produce a serious or 
religious effect on the few children who were 
in attendance. 

This school was not in a destitute neigh- 
borhood, nor in one whose poverty is so great 
that books and other requisites could not 
be furnished. There were in the immediate 
vicinity enough youngsters to crowd the 
building in which the school is held. If any 
people would take the trouble to gather these 
children and to interest them, there is no 



A Very Peculiar Sunday- School. 109 

reason why a school, if properly officered and 
managed, shoujd not be prosperously con- 
ducted. 

Let no reader suppose that our visiting 
party entertained the least feeling of disre- 
spect toward the dear old octogenarian who 
officiates as superintendent of this school. 
We honored him for the work he tries to do. 
We admired his earnest Christianity, and en- 
joyed hearing in his " few remarks," the fer- 
vent expressions of assured hope and perfect 
peace. But as a superintendent he is not a 
success, and he is too old ever to learn how 
to manage a school. If he would resign in 
favor of somebody who could bring into the 
work a younger life, with true zeal and real 
efficiency, he and his neighbors would be 
Astonished to find how teachers and children 
who are now repelled from school would be 
attracted to it, and would crowd there in suf- 
ficient numbers to give it permanent health, 
strength, and success. 



no Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



XVI L 

IT is not polite to call people dunces, either 
when we address them, or when we speak 
of them behind their backs. Nor would the 
name of dunce be exactly the title for the 
collection of teachers and scholars in the 
school into which we now peep. They do 
not desire or intend to be dunces. They do 
not, in some instances, even suspect that 
their shortcomings in learning are noticed. 
But, so far as any actual gain in religious 
knowledge is concerned, we might as well 
put a company of professed grown-up dunces 
to the work of teaching a lot of little dunces. 
Here are teachers. Here are scholars. 
The teachers have come nominally to instruct 
the children in scriptural truth ; the children 
have come to receive the instruction. It is 
an understood thing that the children are not 
very learned. It is also an understood thing 
that the teachers are sufficiently versed in 



The Uneducated Sunday-School. 1 1 1 

scriptural knowledge to convey considerable 
information to those whom they profess to 
teach. 

These are pleasant theories. They do not 
work into practice. The scholars are verily 
unlearned, but the teachers are almost as 
ignorant as they. In the opening exercises 
of the school, all goes well ; the singing is 
done with enthusiasm, and the prayer is dec- 
orously engaged in. The library books are 
rightly attended to, and the attendance is 
carefully marked in the class-books. It is 
when the lesson commences that the trouble 
begins. Teacher makes scholar read the 
verses several times, and then begins to 
thrust great printed questions at him. The 
lesson is in the twenty-seventh chapter of 
Acts ; subject, Pauls shipwreck. The ques- 
tion is asked, at the thirty-ninth verse, 
" When day came, what did they discover ? " 
The child at whom this question is poked, 
says that they discovered a certain creek. 
" Good child," says the teacher, and goes on 
to the next. That child, certainly, knows all 
about the lesson. The next printed question 
is, " Was this a welcome or an unwelcome 



H2 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

sight ? " Child answers, " Dunno." Another 
child says, "Guess it was welcome." The 
next says, " Why, no it wasn't ; it was unwel- 
come." In the diversity of opinions teacher 
is somewhat bothered, and, concluding not 
to commit himself, pushes on to the next 
question, namely, " What* did they do ? " 
; which, in its turn, is followed by, " What 
kind of ships did they have in those days ?" 
The illiterate teacher leaves his class as 
ignorant as when they began. The dry ask- 
ing of these questions has -accomplished 
nothing. Had the children read the story 
of the shipwreck, without being interrupted 
by these bony questions, they might have 
been interested and instructed. A smart 
teacher, who will take the trouble to study 
his lesson and the things connected with it, 
and also to study the art of communicating 
to others what he knows, might spend half 
an hour on these verses, and awaken such 
an interest that on the next Sunday, when 
the doings on the island of Malta are be- 
fore the class, there will not be a vacant seat 
or an unprepared lesson. 

The world is a little wiser than the Sun- 



The Uneducated Sunday- School. 113 

day-school in this respect. When teaching 
is to be done, it must be done by those who 
know something about what they profess to 
teach. Let a teacher of music put out his 
sign, and advertise to teach pupils. Let the 
discovery be made that he knows nothing 
about music, or that he has not the gift of 
imparting what knowledge he has, and few 
people can be found so simple-minded as to 
send their children to take lessons of him. 
Let a lady apply to a board of school direct- 
ors for a situation to teach grammar, geogra- 
phy, or geometry. Tf her acquaintance with 
those sciences is found to be as slender as 
the acquaintance of these uneducated teach- 
ers with the Bible, she is informed that the 
place is not open to her. The good house- 
keeper is not anxious to secure the services 
of the lady from Ireland just landed off the 
emigrant ship, who honestly declares that, 
though she knows nothing about cookery, 
she has no objection to taking the place and 
being "taiched." 

The difficulty with the band of teachers 
before us is that they have never been 
taught how to teach, or what to teach. 



H4 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

"Will you take a class, madam?" "With a 
great deal of pleasure, sir." That is too often 
the only fitness, or examination as to fitness. 
The teachers mean well. They have listened 
all their lives to able sermons. But these 
sermons were all the religious instruction 
they had, and they did not descend into the 
detail of how to teach. They know some of 
the leading doctrines of Christianity ; but 
they have not that intimate knowledge of 
the Bible, and the circumstances connected 
with Bible history, which would make them 
good teachers. Nor have they all the means 
of finding out what to teach and how to teach 
it. Their houses do not abound with com- 

i 

mentaries, Bible dictionaries, concordances, 
or other scriptural helps. In many instances 
their only help, beyond a reference Bible, is 
the question book. And it is a sad fact that 
most of the question books now published 
hinder as much as they help. 

What, then, shall we do for our " unedu- 
cated Sunday-school ? " We must educate it. 
We must show it how to teach. We must 
buy it a good " teachers' library," with all the 
books published for the help of people who 



The Uneducated Sunday-School. I 1 5 

want to study the word of God. The begin- 
ning of this library will cost one hundred 
dollars. After that, spend fifty dollars a year 
on it. The teachers must meet together to 
study. Not only to read over the verses, and 
ask each other the printed questions in the 
question book, but to compare help with 
help, idea with idea, Scripture with Scripture. 
The pastor, or the superintendent, or any 
body who knows how, must preside, and put 
the enterprise through. The study-meeting 
must be social and pleasant. 

The blind cannot lead the blind. Both 
will fall into the ditch. Uneducated teach- 
ers will make ignorant scholars. 



n6 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



XVIII. 
W%i Sun-Stork SxmtrEg-S^00L 

VERY hot weather. Everybody puffing, 
panting, and perspiring. The ther- 
mometer has attained a high degree of exalt- 
ation. People go and look at it, to see how 
much hotter they are than the last time 
they looked, and feel more and more over- 
come by the heat at each examination. We 
drag ourselves to church and home again, 
with an experience of thorough exhaustion. 

The Sunday-school particularly feels the 
wilting effects of the summer warmth. For 
some weeks teachers and scholars have la- 
bored through the weary duties of the school, 
wondering if it was not almost time to close 
for the summer. And now, when we go to 
pay our afternoon visit to the institution 
we find the door locked, the window shutters 
closed, and a conspicuous notice staring at us 
to inform us that, owing to the warmth of 
the weather, the school is closed until the 



The Sun- Struck Sunday- School. 117 

first Sunday in September. The sound of 
praise, or the jingle of Sunday-school rhymes, 
is no longer heard from within the deserted 
walls. Several spiders have erected substan- 
tial cobwebs over the cracks of doors and 
windows. These industrious insects are to 
have undisturbed possession until Septem- 
ber. Where are the children, and where are 
the teachers ? 

The theory as to the whereabouts of the 
children is that they have gone to spend a 
few weeks with their grandmothers or uncles, 
who live in the country. But, glad as most 
of them would be to enjoy such rural recrea- 
tion if it were in -their power, very few of 
them are blessed with country relations. 
Those who do rusticate are apt to stay a 
week or two, and then return. They would 
cheerfully come to Sunday-school, if the 
school were open for them. The fact is that 
the majority of the children are at home, 
and are spending the time usually devoted 
to Sunday-school, in lounging, or in wishing 
that they had something to do. A very 
beautiful theory, which is often advanced to 
meet such a case, is, that the fathers and 



1 1 8 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

mothers spend the time thus gained in teach- 
ing their children the Bible, or the Catechism, 
or some Psalms and Hymns. A peep into a 
few houses in which the families are sup- 
posed to be thus engaged discloses the fact 
that most. of our fellow-citizens are disposed, 
especially in midsummer, to make the Sab- 
bath as literally as possible a day of rest 
Sabbath indolence is, too generally, the order 
of the day, 

And the teachers, where are they ? All 
gone to the sea-shore, to Niagara, or to the 
White Mountains? Probably one out of 
every fifty 1 is luxuriating in some such jaunt. 
A few have gone to see their friends in the 
country ; a few are off somewhere or other 
for a week or two ; while very few are absent 
for the whole time for which the school is 
closed and religious instruction suspended. 
If we go after the teachers with a search-war- 
rant, we shall probably find them enjoying 
their " day of rest " stretched on the bed, or 
reposing in a comfortable chair. This is 
luxurious, but it does not instruct ignorant 
children, whose souls are as precious in hot 
weather as when snow is on the ground j 



TJic Sun- Struck Sunday-School. 119 

who are ready to go and be taught as long 
as anybody is ready to go and teach them. 

The proper sign to hang on the door, then, 
during the summer suspension, would be, 
" Closed, because the weather is too hot for the 
teachers to come" And we may as well be 
honest with our signs, if we exhibit any. 
Sometimes a church closes for the summer, 
and announces that it is " closed for repairs." 
A charitable public, of course, do not construe 
this to mean that the people wanted a holi- 
day. The " repairs " may occupy a week, or 
three months, according to circumstances. 
But when a Church gravely announces (as we 
often see in newspaper advertisements) that 
it "will be closed during July and August, 
in order that it may be cleaned" we must 
conclude either that the worshipers at that 
church are very untidy in their habits, or that 
the sexton is a very unclean person, or that 
the scouring committee have selected some 
uncommonly slow people to do their work. 

There is nothing to be gained by closing 
our Sunday-schools for the summer. Chil- 
dren who love the school will stick to it 
through heat and cold. They will not grum- 



120 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

ble much at the extremes of weather unless 
they hear older persons grumble, and then 
they will industriously imitate them. 

But says somebody, " The teachers will 
not come, and what are you to do ? " 

If they cannot come, let them send substi- 
tutes. That will afford excellent opportunity 
for new Christians to try their hands at teach- 
ing. If they cannot or will not come, and 
cannot or will not send substitutes, let them 
stay at home, and we will try the experiment 
of getting along without them. What ! a 
Sunday-school without teachers ! Yes, and 
a prosperous one, too. 

Let all the teachers stay away, and one 
good man, who understands dealing with 
children, spend one hour in instructing the 
young folks. It will do them more good than 
the sleepy instruction which would be given 
by teachers on whose languid countenances 
the children could read the explanation that 
they came only because they had to, that 
they didn't want to come, and that they 
wanted to go home as soon as possible to 
finish their naps. The other half hour could 
be profitably employed in singing. It would 



The Sim- Struck Sunday- School, 121 

be no harder on the one man than it would 
be for him to superintend the labors of two 
or three dozen sleepy teachers, and to extem- 
porize substitutes for those who have left 
their classes unprovided for. 

Keep up the Sunday-school all summer, 
even if you vary the exercises materially from 
the accustomed routine. You will have a 
solid school in the fall. Dismiss for the sum- 
mer, and you will find that before September 
many of your children have straggled off to 
other schools which have had sufficient en- 
terprise to keep open. The work of rebuild- 
ing the shattered concern will be almost 
equal to that of constructing a new one. 



122 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



XIX. 

WHEN the cold weather of winter 
sets in, many a weak country Sun- 
day-school wraps itself, as it were, in a 
winding sheet of dejectedness, calls its 
friends together for a funeral meeting, 
and prepares to go into winter quar- 
ters. It continues in a state of suspended 
animation until the winter is over, and the 
worst of the mud has dried up from the 
roads. Then, as bears, snakes, and alligators 
arouse from their winter sleep, and come 
from the nooks, crevices, and caverns in 
which they have hibernated, so does such a 
benumbed concern half confidently open its 
eyes, stretch its limbs, look around to sur- 
vey the situation, and begin to manifest signs 
of vitality in a very moderate way. 

There is little use in scolding the people 
who close their schools in winter. There is 
a set of well-worn arguments in favor of 
keeping open throughout the year. We are 



TJic Frost-Bitten Snnday-ScJiool. 123 

told that the public schools and blacksmiths' 
shops are open all winter, and that the whis- 
ky-shops never close their doors on a cus- 
tomer, except when he is too drunk or too 
poor to pay for his stimulants. When these 
arguments fail, somebody gravely comes 
along and asks if the devil gives holiday in 
winter. The sum of the matter seems to be 
that, if all these agencies can carry on their 
operations all winter, the Sunday-schools 
ought also to go as steadily on. 

Well and good, as far as the theory goes. 
All the schools ought to keep open. Every 
teacher ought to come with his lesson well 
studied, even though the school is seven 
miles from his home, and he must ride on the 
back of a hard-trotting mule. Every child 
ought to come with bright eyes, clean face, 
and a light heart, though he need to tramp 
five miles through snow-drifts, or trudge 
through saturated clay, one pound and a half 
of which cleaves to each foot at every step 
that is taken. 

But we cannot have every thing to please 
us. Beautiful as the theory is of plodding 
through wind, snow, rain, sleet, ice, and mud, 



124 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

there are a great many people who, much as 
they desire it, cannot accomplish all they 
would. Some of them have really wearied 
themselves *in the work of the week, and to 
such an extent that they must rest on the 
Lord's day. It is comparatively easy for 
city folks to walk to church over well-cleaned 
pavements, or ride thither in street cars, and 
on the way legislate concerning country Sun- 
day-schools, and declare that they should be 
kept open all winter. Some of the self-same 
consider themselves guilty of no inconsist- 
ency when in July (when there is neither 
snow nor mud, and all the ice they see is 
in the form of ice-cream ; when there is no 
biting blast, nor pelting storm, nor slippery 
walk, nor any obstacle greater than hot sun- 
shine) they declare themselves unable to 
continue their Sunday-school till the middle 
of September. 

If this matter were thoroughly investi- 
gated, there would be startling revelations, 
disclosing the fact that there are a great 
many schools which have been closed during 
winter, which might as well have been kept 
open. We would also find that in a great 



The Frost-Bitten Sunday- School 125 

many city schools there were both children 
and teachers who did not go to Newport, 
Saratoga, the White Mountains, Niagara, 
or elsewhere, to rusticate, and for whom 
the schools might safely be kept open all 
summer. 

A frost-bitten Sunday-school deserves pity, 
just as we pity a man who suffers with rheu- 
matism. It would be better if the man were 
free from it. But he has it, or rather it has 
him, and let him make the most it. A man 
with no rheumatism can do a great many 
things that a rheumatic man cannot. A 
school which has vitality enough to keep 
open all winter, can do a great deal more 
than one which hibernates. 

Welcome to you, O ye frost-bitten, as 
ye wake from your winter slumbers ! The 
spring-time has come. The coldness is over. 
The vigor of new life is felt. The bustle of 
returning activity is astir. There is now no 
show for the sleepers. Let every body be in 
his place, and awake to all his duties and all 
his joys. 

Open the damp old school-room, and let 
the light of heaven come in. Throw up 



126 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

the window-sashes, and let the health-giving 
May breeze sweep through. Whitewash the 
walls, and mend the broken hinges, and clear 
away the ash-heap, and wash the sooty panes 
of glass, and the muddy floor. Arrange the 
seats in the coziest pattern, and deck the 
sides and corners of the room with neat 
Scripture mottoes. Bring all the flowers the 
neighborhood can afford, and give to each 
poor child who has no flowers at home a 
bunch to cheer the house. Gather the chil- 
dren, reconstruct the roll, and let the house 
be full. 

Then go on with your spring and summer 
work in such a way that, by the grace of God, 
you will have enough vitality next Novem- 
ber to keep you going all winter. 



The Back-Woods Sunday- School. 127 



xx. 

THERE are some people who are blind 
to the excellences of any thing which 
has not been made to order purposely for 
them, and especially fitted to their wants. 
Of this description was one whose complain- 
ing voice was heard at a certain Sunday- 
school convention, held in a county noted 
for its prosperous schools and the general 
excellence of its teachers. Many of the 
brethren had freely expressed their views, 
and the occasion had been one of rare inter- 
est and of great profit. A prominent citizen 
urged that some of the sisters would take 
part in the discussions, particularly in the 
matter of relating their experience as to the 
good they had received from the convention. 
After much hesitation a gaunt-looking sister 
arose, and, in a voice whose severe tones 
were a compound of sorrow and reproach, 



128 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

said, " It haint done me no good. My school 
ts a mission school ! " 

Now the fact was that this convention had 
been more than ordinarily fruitful in sugges- 
tions as to study and teaching, suitable for 
every grade and every condition of school 
Because its teachings had not been specially 
announced as " for mission school-teachers," 
the sister failed to see any thing in them cal- 
culated to meet her case. 

Just like this unsatisfied female is many a 
teacher of a country Sunday-school. Remote 
from centers of business and wealth, he reads 
the various Sunday-school periodicals, only 
to see in them hints and directions which he 
considers applicable alone to schools which 
have plenty of money, and ample facilities 
for indulging in all desired improvements. 
He mourns over the fact that most of the 
writings and publications in reference to 
Sunday-school work have regard rather to 
the steepled, carpeted, and otherwise luxu- 
rious schools of the city, than to the humbler 
educational facilities with which his neigh- 
borhood is furnished. He says that his 
school is without new-fangled seats, carpets, 



The Back-Woods Sunday-School. 129 

cushions, bell, question books, papers, pulpit, 
steeple, stained glass, piano, organ, or any of 
the other modern improvements. He wants 
to know what he shall do in order to be 
even with the city people, who have all these 
things, and for whom all the publications are 
issued. * 

Do ? Why, good brother, go right ahead, 
in your best possible style. If you have no 
oiled-walnut benches, sit on slabs, or any 
thing you can get. We may sit on mahog- 
any chairs with carved legs which give way 
under us, or on forest stumps, which there is 
no possibility of upsetting. If you cannot 
hold* your Sunday-school in a brown-stone 
edifice, or in one which is built of brick, and 
veneered with two inches of that precious 
geological rubbish, build a house of log, or 
plank* dr canvas, or any thing that will hold 
together. If you have no steeple, painted 
and satided in imitation, of brown or other 
stone, build your log school-house near a 
great forest-tree, which as surely points t6 
heaven as the most gorgeously decorated 
and heavily mortgaged spire that ever was 
lifted into the air. If you have no carpet on 



130 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

your floor, be thankful that you are free 
from the deposit of dust which inevitably 
settles under it, to be raised in a cloud and 
inhaled as the consequence of every footstep 
over it. 

Look at any reasonable publication for 
Sunday-school people, and you will find that 
its teachings concerning the work of carrying 
the Gospel to fallen humanity are as applica- 
ble to the efforts which are put forth in the for- 
est, as to those which are maintained among 
brick and mortar and stone foundations, lofty 
steeple, gorgeous windows, melodious organs, 
and weighty mortgages. The human heart 
is as depraved in the country as in the city. 
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is as efficacious 
for complete salvation in the pine-forests of 
Michigan, or among the mahogany-trees of 
Santo Domingo, as in the broad aisles and 
comfortable seats of a Fifth Avenue church, 
with a steeple two hundred feet high, and 
full equipment of first, second, and third 
mortgages, with trimmings of floating debt 
to match. To take this Gospel to the human 
heart, whether of adult or child, banker or 
wood-chopper, we must go kindly ; we must 



The Back-Woods Sunday- School. 131 

secure attention ; we must be faithful and 
earnest in our teaching. 

It is one of the beauties of the religion of 
Jesus Christ, that it adapts itself to every 
condition in which men are found. In palace 
or hovel, on tropical sands or amid Arctic 
icebergs, to king or pauper, to merchant or 
ditch-digger, it is of the same " power of God 
and wisdom of God unto salvation." 

Be of good cheer, brother of the pine for- 
est. There are a great many things on earth 
which it is not necessary to have — a great 
many which we are better without. But 
wherever you labor do your best, and aim 
for the results. Untrammeled by many 
things which at a distance seem like bless- 
ings, but which a closer inspection would 
show to be snares, you can do perhaps a bet- 
ter and more lasting work than you could if 
tied hand and foot with some of the outside 
things of the work, from which you are now 
free. 



•• 



132 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



s 



XXL 

% £ itfle |rimar S Jtople. 

OME folks call them The Infant Class. 
Others prefer Primary Department. In 
either case there is very little trouble in find- 
ing out exactly what is meant. This, by the 
way, is the great use of a name. The names 
applied to many of the things of most fre- 
quent mention are, strictly speaking, defi- 
cient in correctness. * There has been, in the 
last year or two, considerable discussion with 
a view to the use of the term Bible-school 
instead of the long-used Sunday-school Per- 
haps it would have been better if Bible-school 
had originally been used. But the other 
name has been so long in use, that to change 
it would cost more trouble than the proposed 
gain would be worth. The name Bible-class, 
as applied to a company of advanced schol- 
ars, is a misnomer, for all our classes study 
the Bible ; yet people generally understand 
what it means. The name India Rubber is a 



The Little Primary People. 133 

very imperfect one for the wonderful gum 
which it designates. When this gum was 
first brought into use, it was only for erasing 
pencil marks, which was all that it was sup- 
posed to be good for. The old name still 
adheres to it, though it is now used for hun- 
dreds of other purposes. Its proper name is 
Caoutchouc. But if we were to go into what 
is known as a " rubber-goods " store, and ask 
to be shown some caoutchouc shoes, the store- 
man would grin at us with wonderment, and 
tell us he had no such shoes in his establish- 
ment. The word infant literally means one 
who cannot speak. Yet, in the eye of the 
law, any person who has not reached the age 
of twenty-one is an infant. So, if we would 
be legally strict, we should put nearly the 
whole of the school in the "Infant Depart- 
ment." If we would be physiologically cor- 
rect, we should call none of our scholars 
infants, for they can all speak. 

So much for the name. Call it what we 
please, the Department of Little People is of 
sufficient importance to be worthy of the 
best talent we can find in the whole company 
of teachers. That which is stamped on their 



134 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

minds, is stamped there for life. They are 
entitled to as real and as excellent teaching 
as any of the larger children. Their exer- 
cises ought not to be a mere amusement, or 
show ; though we may smooth the pathway 
of these young ones to religious learning, 
•with many an appliance which we have no 
need to introduce into any other department 
of the school. Pictures, blackboard, object- 
lessons of every conceivable variety, may 
safely find a welcome here, if judiciously in- 
troduced. But let us ever lift up the voice 
of prohibitive warning against the practice, 
common in certain quarters, of turning this 
precious department into a sort of circus, 
where crammed little children are trained 
and kept for show to the crowds of gaping 
visitors who are admitted to see them. 

The Primary Department is often seriously 
interfered with by well-meaning intruders 
who want to see how infant-class teaching is 
done. They would not sit down on the end 
of a teacher's class-bench, and listen to his 
teaching of his half dozen scholars ; but they 
are free to saunter in the infant-class teach- 
er's domain, and sit as spectators, or perhaps 



The Little Primary People. 135 

fish for the privilege of making a speech. 
They know they will not be invited, or even 
allowed, to make a speech in the main school, 
but the infants are fair game for them, just 
as paupers in the almshouse are admitted to 
be fit subjects for the experiments of the 
young gentlemen who are studying physic 
and surgery. 

Suppose a family breakfast were to be 
eaten with such skill, gracefulness, rapidity, 
or otherwise, in such a remarkable manner as 
to attract the curious attention of a dozen 
neighbors or strangers, intent on seeing how 
the family do it. They gaze into the dining- 
room from outside the street windows, or 
peep through die crack of the door, or the 
keyhole, or even enter the room, and stand 
or sit, that they may the better take observa- 
tions. Such people would probably be asked 
to leave; for, however great or numerous 
may be the excellent features of our eating, 
we can eat more happily and successfully if 
we are free from inspection. 

Just so with teaching. There are a num- 
ber of most capable and successful infant- 
class teachers who have been so annoyed by 



136 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

the continual coming of the curious, as to an 
exhibition, that they have been compelled to 
lock their doors during the hour of teaching. 
That hour is sacred. Shut out the intruder. 
If some good friend comes in who knows 
how to help, and whose help will be accept- 
able, make use of him. 

Why a woman should almost always be 

placed in charge of this department, and a 

« 

man so seldom, is one of the inexplicable 
mysteries of the work. Perhaps there is 
something in woman's voice and woman's 
ways that goes to the hearts of the children 
more efficiently than any thing a man can 
bring to bear on them. But there are excel- 
lent men in charge of infaut-classes, even 
though they are few. 

A severe, crusty person may possibly at- 
tain some degree of success with a class of 
large children, but hardly ever with the Lit- 
tle People. No cross woman, with acidulous 
soul, austere visage, and sharp voice, need 
hope to accomplish much with them. 

Open the door for the little ones to all 
the liberty and the life of the Gospel. The 
world has worry enough in store for them 



The Little Primary People. 137 

when they grow older. Crowd into them 
such a stock of sunshine that it will lighten 
their path as they grow with the cares of 
manhood and womanhood. Teach them all 
that they can understand about God, and 
remember that they come to him in all sim- 
plicity, and not with the cavils which suggest 
themselves to the mind of the maturer theo- 
logian. God bless the little youngsters ! 



138 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



xxii. • 

SOME years since a very fine church was 
built in one of our cities, in exact imita- 
tion of one which was erected in England 
several centuries ago. The architect was 
particular in copying all the details of the 
model church, from steeple to colored glass, 
and the building committee faithfully carried 
out his directions. But when the expensive 
pile was nearly finished it was discovered, to 
the great embarrassment of all concerned, 
that there was no door by which to reach 
the coal cellar ! Whose fault was it ? The 
carpenters and masons had done all the 
building committee had told th^m ; the com- 
mittee had followed the directions of the 
architect ; and the architect had drawn his 
plans in exact copy of the church which was 
to be imitated, adding only the cellar itself. 
The fault was with the ancient persons who 
built the mediaeval church ; no coal being 






The Stat-ved Little Infant School. 139 

used in those days, there was no necessity 
for a coal cellar, and consequently none for 
a cellar door. The omission was quietly 
made good, and the architect has since made 
it a rule not to copy an ancient structure 
with such Chinese exactness. 

A common omission, of similar character, 
yet involving more important interests, is 
often made in the erection and furnishing of 
our churches. The people who built the 
Christian churches of several hundred years 
ago, made but slight provision in them for 
the care and instruction of their little chil- 
dren. And we, though we may provide in 
abundance for the larger ones, too often neg- 
lect to provide for the babes such things as 
suit the wants of their tender years, A good 
infant school is more important to some of 
the interests of the Church than even a good 
coal cellar. Spiritual life and warmth are 
often kindled into a flame in the hearts of the 
lambs, while the old and hardened sinners 
refuse to be moved by the preaching of the 
word, which they have heard all their lives. 
We must not neglect our babes, even if it was 
the fashion to do so several hundred years ago. 



140 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

The Starved Little Infant School is held 
in a far corner of the gallery, or in a small 
and unventilated room, which is considered 
to be good enough for little children. Pews, 
hard benches, or second-hand chairs, are fur- 
nished for the young disciples to sit on. 
Some of them are so high that the children 
have to be pushed up to them, or lifted on 
them. It is as if grown persons were made 
to sit on pianos, or mantel-pieces, with their 
lower extremities dangling in the air. Some- 
body says that would be ridiculous, and 
somebody else says it would be uncomfort- 
able. It would be both ; and it is both ridic- 
ulous and uncomfortable to let little chil- 
dren's feet dangle and kick between bench 
and floor. And the more negligent the 
Church is in providing suitable seats for the 
little ones, the more unreasonable we often 
find the teacher, in requiring that they should 
sit with the grave solemnity and perfect si- 
lence maintained by elderly persons who are 
comfortably seated. If we were made to sit 
on a piano, or something the height of a 
piano, during a sermon an hour long, would 
not these heels knock together ? 



The Starved Little Infant School. 141 

The singing in the Hungry Little School 
is lean enough. Only a few children are 
present, (the teacher tells us that there are 
not many children in the neighborhood, but 
we know better,) and these children are 
without the wholesome stimulus which a good 
crowd imparts. They sing somewhat as the 
grown-up people in many congregations do, 
that is to say, with a very feeble sound, and 
with perfect gentility and finished propriety. 
There is no soul to the singing. It does not 
make any body feel good to hear it. It does 
not act as bait to bring the children of the 
neighborhood to school. 

The children know but little. Some say 
that is because they are little children. But 
there is another reason, namely, that they 
have not been taught much. It h&s been 
considered that teaching has been thrown 
away on people under sixteen years old. 
The main object of the enterprise has been 
to keep the children quiet. That has been a 
success, to a reasonable extent. If the teach- 
er will try a little energetic communication 
of scriptural knowledge to them, she will be 
astonished to find how much they can take 



142 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools* 

in, and how quickly they will take it. If she 
will tell them how Jesus Christ died to save 
their souls, she will find that they can com- 
prehend the story of salvation as readily as 
their grandmothers and grandfathers. 

The library of this little school is a " pe- 
culiar institution." As many of the children 
wear the cast-off clothing of their parents, 
cut down and altered to suit them, so the 
cast-off library of the larger school has been 
presented to the infants, But no adaptation 
of it to their wants has been made, as is gen- 
erally made in the case of the clothing. It 
comprises a miscellaneous selection of back- 
broken and dog-eared books, principally to 
be valued according to the waste paper in 
them. Among the lot are " A Treatise on 
Parental Training," and " Butler's Analogy." 
Economy which is praiseworthy as to cloth- 
ing, is reprehensible as to books. The book- 
case may be sold for kindling wood, and its 
contents, at three cents a pound, delivered 
to a dealer in junk ; and the money invested 
in a nice library would be found to be well 
spent. 

Keep a good heart, little children. You 



The Starved Little Infant School. 143 

will grow up some of these days, and be as 
big as anybody. Make the best of it now, 
and hope for better when you are strong 
enough to push for yourselves, and to make 
the Church and the world acquainted with 
your wants. 



144 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



XXIII. 

SOME mature persons, whose classes are 
composed of children almost grown to 
be men and women, will pass this chapter by. 
They think that the affairs of the very little 
disciples are beneath their attention. While 
they appreciate the Aabor involved and the 
skill required, in taking the truth to the minds 
of eighteen-year-old humanity, they regard 
the infant school as a thing which will work 
its way as a matter of course. Little children 
will always behave themselves ; will always 
bite at the bait of a few cents' worth of pict- 
ure-book, reward card, or picture newspaper ; 
will learn every thing that is taught them, do 
exactly as they are told, and go home and 
tell their parents all about it. Or, if they 
will not do all these, it is believed that they 
ought to ; and, as they are shut off in a room 
by themselves, it makes small difference to 



The Flourishing Infant School. 145 

some of these wise bodies whether they do 
or not. 

The man whose farm furnishes an abun- 
dance of fine tomatoes for the market is not 
the man who said that it made no difference 
how the little plants were treated when they 
were so small that he could hold two dozen 
of them in each hand. As the successful 
raiser of these vegetables sets out each little 
plant carefully and trains it judiciously, so do 
they who would enjoy the blessings of a 
prosperous Sunday-school look well to the 
interests, spiritual, moral, and physical, of the 
miniature men and women who compose its 
infant school. 

The infant school has a right to flourish. 
Its prosperity and the prosperity of the more 
advanced department are very closely linked 
together. There was a time when it was 
thought that any old nurse who could take 
care of children cduld take care of the infant 
school. Infants were once: thrust into any 
out-of-the-way apartment, so as to be sure 
that they would disturb nobody by their sing- 
ing and other noisy exercises. Now, the best 

person that can be found is put in command 
10 



146 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

of the infant school, and as decent a room as 
possible is furnished lpr the accommodation 
of the juveniles. Instead of consuming time 
in clapping hands, parading round the nar- 
row confines of the room, and such other 
serious monkey capers as used to be cus- 
tomary, attention is given to real instruction. 
While the instruction is made as pleasant as 
possible, the children are not treated as kit- 
tens, sent to be entertained and amused, but 
as immortal beings, to be taught the way 
of life. 

The successful teacher of the flourishing 
infant school is £ person of peculiar gifts. 
Some would draw the line closely as to the 
individual, without inquiring into the neces- 
sary ability. Some say that the infant-school 
teacher should always be a married lady ; 
others, that she should be an elderly lady 
who has never married ; while others insist 
that none but an unmarried young lady can 
do the work properly ; and some are to be 
found who think that a good man is better 
than anybody of the other sex, old or yoi*ng, 
married or single. It would be as wise to 
select persons according to the color of their 



The Flourishing Infant School. 147 

hair, the length of their noses, or some other 
physical peculiarity, as to prescribe such 
terms of fitness for the office. The teacher 
in whose infant school the writer spent sev- 
eral very happy years was an old lady of ex- 
ceedingly unhandsome personal appearance, 
amounting almost to deformity. But we all 
loved her ; and though she has been in her 
grave for a number of years, her memory is 
held in affectionate remembrance by hun- 
dreds who, when little people, sat under her 
faithful teaching. 

There is an air of cheerfulness pervading 
the good infant school. The teacher, even 
though she may have to administer frequent 
reproofs, does not make it her chief business 
to tweak the children's ears, or scold them 
for being bad and naughty children. 

She has learned to bear with their youthful 
playfulness, and to make allowance for the 
want of training from which many of them 
have suffered at their homes. Johnny boun- 
ces into school with the friskiness of an un- 
broken colt ; the teacher does not frighten 
him .by a loud reproof, or an angry shake, 
but softly pats him into a more quiet de- 



148 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

mean or. When the roll is called, and an 
absent child's name is mentioned, and little 
Patty sings out, " She's to home, playing out 
in the street," or Susie gives the information, 
" He aint a comm* 'cause he aint got no 
clothes," the teacher, instead of scowling at 
the volunteers of uncalled-for intelligence, 
offers some pleasant remark concerning the 
absentees, or sends some message to them, 
the effect of which is rather to welcome them 
back to school, than to scare them away from 
it. Teacher loves the children, and the chil- 
dren love teacher, and tell her many of their 
little troubles and sorrows, for they have 
them, just as elderly persons have, and need 
sympathy and relief, just as the mature and 
aged do. 

Listen to the singing. One of the popular 
hymns begins, " Who shall sing, if not the 
children ? " and in the next verse cautions 
the parents to " stand not in their way ;" and 
these children sing with such earnestness as 
to show that they mean to make up for all 
the deficiency of their seniors in this respect, 
and to make parents and all other people 
clear the track. Simple hymns and simple 



The Flourishing Infant School. 149 

tunes are not only rung out in the school, 
but are carried home and joyfully echoed 
through street, lane, and alley, often pervad- 
ing with their sweet missionary influence the 
foulest moral atmosphere, and taking the 
message of Christ's salvation to places which 
the most faithful tract distributer could never 
reach, and to the hearts of those who never 
would consent to read the Gospel from 
the printed page. There is a delightful unc- 
tion, and there is a rich melody in the sing- 
ing of these babes in Christ, which does not 
always pertain to the musical devotion of 
grown-up people. 

But what is taught ? And how is it taught? 
The faithful and judicious teacher can teach 
these small children the truths of the Gospel 
as effectually as they can be taught to more 
advanced pupils. If she would undertake to 
teach in the way in which older children are 
taught, she might some day wake to the fact 
that the little folks are learning nothing. If 
she were to set them long or short lessons, 
and require them to say them to her on Sun- 
day, after having learned them at home dur- 
ing the week, she would find that most of 



150 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

her scholars would come unprepared. It is 
a common blunder, by the way, among teach- 
ers of all kinds of schools, to suppose that 
hearing children recite lessons is instructing 
them. No ; the instruction must be given to 
the infants while they are together. Line 
upon line, precept upon precept, must be 
worked into them — not pounded in nor driven 
in, as is the fashion with some cross people 
who would aspire to the position of teacher. 
A few verses of Scripture recited in concert ; 
a little time spent in explaining them ; the 
story of Samson, or of some other hero " of 
whom the world was not worthy ;" a plain 
home application of the interesting Bible ac- 
count of it ; with such other good things of 
Gospel wisdom as almost any person of tact 
can select for himself, will interest and profit 
them. It is impossible to give a full recipe 
for infant-school teaching, just as it is im- 
possible to show a man, by merely telling 
him how to do it, the way to preach a ser- 
mon. We must be earnest, affectionate, 
and plain with the little people. We must 
be simple without being silly. We must 
keep them entertained every moment of 



The Flourishing Infant School. 151 

the time, and yet must not talk nonsense to 
them. 

God bless the babes ! God bless the good, 
kind people who bear with their little infirm- 
ities, and tell them the wonders of redeeming 
love ! 



152 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



XXIV. 

THE ideas of excellence entertained by 
different people in different parts of the 
country are so numerous, and so curious, that 
the task of finding a Sunday-school which 
every body would accept as a model, would 
be a hopeless one. And yet we may all, ac- 
cording to our various preferences and expe- 
riences, select some standard which seems 
more to our liking than any other, and adopt 
it as our model. Any Sunday-school which 
should have the presumption to set up for a 
Model School would, in all probability, soon 
expose the emptiness of its pretensions by 
making a sorry failure. 

The school which may safely serve as a 
model for our imitation — if we must imitate 
— is not necessarily the largest school ; nor 
the most elegantly furnished ; nor the most 
beautifully lodated ; nor the school with the 
loudest music, the most gaudily dressed chil- 



The Model Sunday- School. 153 

dren, the most inviting picnics, the most 
gorgeous processions, or the most intricate 
blackboard exercises. 

The Model Sunday-school is a cheerful 
place. It is not held in a moldy cellar, with 
damprtess trickling over the walls, decayed 
floor-boards yielding beneath the feet, and 
musty odors greeting the nostrils. Recog- 
nizing sunshine and pure air as among the 
good gifts of God, its arrangements are such 
as to afford a hearty welcome to all who 
enter its doors. Its windows give ample 
light, and are not obscured by dirt and cob- 
webs. Its provisions for ventilation secure a 
sufficient change of air to meet the wants of 
the lungs of the worshipers and students 
who assemble there. Pleasant pictures and 
maps adorn the walls, interspersed here and 
there with neatly-embellished texts of Script- 
ure. The seats are so placed that the schol- 
ars can look at the superintendent as he 
opens and closes the school, and are of such 
a shape as not to remind those who sit on 
them of the tortures of the Inquisition. 

The infant department is separated from 
the rest of the school by sliding doors, or 



154 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

other conveniences, so as to keep the little 
folks and the larger ones from annoying each 
other by the diverse styles of their exercises. 
Ample room and good ventilation are al- 
lowed the little ones. Though the infants 
sit on raised seats, after the manner of steps, 
the ceiling is of sufficient height to avoid 
crowding the heads of the topmost row of 
children against it. The senior classes, who 
need separate accommodations, are provided 
for, either in rooms which communicate with 
the main school, or, if that is not practicable, 
in some other parts of the building. They 
are present with the rest of the scholars at 
the opening and closing exercises, so that all 
may join in prayer and praise, and that they 
'may see and help each other. 

The model Sunday-school has a neat bolt 
on the door of entrance, which is fastened, at 
the beginning of the opening exercises, so as 
to keep the late people in the vestibule, 
where they will not disturb those who have 
come in time. When the opening exercises 
are over, the late folks, if there are any, are 
allowed to march in, and the other people 
gaze at them. 



The Model Sunday-School. 155 

The opening services are devotional, spir- 
ited, and brief. The music rings out with 
hearty utterance of sacred song — no drawl- 
ing, no dragging, no whining, no singing of 
ridiculous rubbish to dance-house jingles. 
The study-hour is sacredly devoted to the 
study of the lesson. One lesson is provided 
for the whole school. The study-meeting, 
held during the week, has given the teachers 
a stock of information on the passage of 
Scripture, which enables them to occupy the 
whole time in the work of teaching. Even 
if twenty-five peripatetic Sunday-school or- 
ators wander in to make speeches, no matter 
how distinguished they may be, no speech- 
making is allowed until the teaching is over. 
Then, if any one who is present has an ear- 
nest word to say in connection with what has 
been taught, opportunity is allowed him. 
The empty speaker, who, having nothing to 
say, wants to make a speech, is allowed the 
golden opportunity of remaining silent. The 
superintendent closes with a few words of 
application of the lesson, using blackboard 
and maps, if the lesson is one requiring 
them. Sometimes the pastor adds his voice 



156 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

to that of the superintendent ; and, at Stated 
times, his sermon to the children commands 
their attention and engages their interest. 

The great object of Sunday-school teach- 
ing is clearly and constantly borne in mind 
by all connected with the Model Sunday- 
school. Pastor, superintendent, and teach- 
ers all aim to show their pupils, whether old 
or young, their need of salvation, the all- 
sufficiency of Jesus as their Saviour, and the 
blessedness of growing in grace and knowl- 
edge when they have found him and pro- 
fessed his name. A genial, joyful spirit of 
Christian welcome pervades the whole school. 
The comfort and the joy of continual suc- 
cess animates all concerned with a holy am- 
bition. The constant enjoyment of Gods 
blessing produces a continuous condition of 
revival ; and the work which is done in such 
a school is all light, is all a pleasure, for it is 
always accomplishing the happiest results. 



The Young People in their 'Teens. 157 



XXV. 

AMONG the many important questions 
which crowd on Sunday-school people 
in their discussions, is the too-much-neglected 
one, " How shall we keep our older schol- 
ars ? " It is one which thrusts itself forward 
in Convention, Institute, Teachers* Meeting, 
and, in fact, in all the operations of Sunday- 
school work. It is often dropped into the 
question-box of an Institute, and dismissed 
in a moment with some such answer as, 
"Why, by keeping them interested, to be 
sure." In some instances, the sage who has 
given the answer seems to think the matter 
is thus settled beyond controversy. 

" Keeping them interested " is good, as far 
as it goes ; but the work of interesting a 
growing boy or girl is more of a science than 
most people are disposed to consider it. 
The teacher who succeeds in holding the 
attention of a boy eleven years old, may 



158 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

entirely fail to engage the interest of the same 
boy when he reaches the comparatively ma- 
tute age of fifteen. It often happens that, 
while the boy has grown four years in mind 
and body, the teacher, who did all his grow- 
ing years ago, has stood still. When this is 
the case, the boy has gone beyond him, and 
both parties know it What suited the boy 
of eleven may fail to profit the boy of fifteen. 
When the boy realizes that the teacher is 
unable to meet his wants, it is by no means 
unnatural that he should leave. A class of 
large boys recently stampeded, in a body, 
from one of our prominent Sunday-schools. 
When they were taken to task by an elderly 
and somewhat austere brother for their hard- 
ness of heart, in leaving the privileges of the 
school, their spokesman remarked, in reply, 
" Well, give us something worth staying for 
and we'll stay." Their teacher had not been 
in the habit of studying his lesson, and the 
boys knew that. He failed in his attempt to 
pass off his platitudes on them for scriptural 
wisdom. 

We cannot, in our Sunday-schools, compel 
the attendance of our scholars, as in week- 



The Young People in their 'Teens. 159 

day schools. We may grieve over the loss 
of our older scholars ; but if we severely 
insist that they shall and must come back, 
and that they are bad and wicked children if 
they do not, they are apt to stand outside 
and. laugh at us. It is our duty to try to 
master the art and science of teaching them, 
and of holding their attention, so as to com- 
pel them to come ; not by any rude or merely 
legal process of compulsion, but by the exer- 
cise of the same kind of love " that sweetly 
forced us in " to the Gospel feast. 

Our big boys and girls do not care for 
"baby talk." Sunday-school orators, men 
old enough to know better, often commence 
a speech with, " Well, my dear little children, 
I am very glad to see you here to-day. I 
love little children. I was once a little child 
myself," and so forth, and so forth, and so 
forth. This may do for children who sit at 
table on high chairs* But put yourself in 
the place of the growing lad who only this 
morning surreptitiously possessed himself of 
his father's razor to scrape off the six silky 
hairs which appeared on his manly upper lip. 
What does that young person think of such 



i Go Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

an address? Or the sixteen-year-old girl, 
who is wearing at least as much finery as her 
mother, and who thinks a great deal more 
of it than her mother does of hers, what says 
she to " my dear little girl ? " 

We may tell these young folks to be hum- 
ble and childlike ; but we ought to remem- 
ber that they are just about as likely to be 
so as we were at their time of life. 

And if we would teach these boys and 
girls any thing calculated to give us a hold 
on them, we must know it ourselves, in order 
to teach it. We must not only know it for 
ourselves, but be able to impart it to them, 
The empty teacher, who goes before a class 
of this kind of scholars with an unprepared 
lesson, will soon be found out and exposed 
by them. We can hardly blame the young- 
sters for making the exposition, either. 

The faculties of these young people are 
wide awake. We must be as wide awake as 
they are. We must leave no means untried 
to keep and hold them. After teaching and 
training them for several years, it is a pity 
to let them slip off just at the time when 
they most need faithful instruction. 



The Blackboard in the Sunday-School. 161 



XXVI. 

A DELIGHTFULLY profitable help, or 
a grievous nuisance, according to the 
way in which it is managed. It sprang into 
popularity a few years ago as an adjunct to 
Sunday-school teaching, following out the 
excellent practice of using it as a help in the 
secular schools. 

It would be a sin to charge the unoffending 
blackboard with all the astonishing " exer- 
cises " which have been chalked upon its sur- 
face. Many marvelous monstrosities have 
been set before the wondering juveniles, as 
aids to the exposition of the lesson, whose 
tendency must have been rather to bewilder 
than to instruct. Crosses, anchors, rocks, 
lanterns, hearts, ships, prodigal sons, lambs, 
sheep, goats, eagles, acrostics, poems, enig- 
mas, angels, volcanoes, ladders, gateways, and 
even the upper heavens, have been set forth 
in chalks of divers colors, and in degrees of ar- 



162 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

tistic execution, of every conceivable variety. 
Among all these, many have been full of 
instruction and profit. There have been 
many instances in which Gospel truth has 
been deeply impressed on the youthful mind 
by the use of the blackboard. There are 
many superintendents who statedly use the 
blackboard with marked profit to themselves 
and to their schools. There are others who 
simply make themselves and their boards 
ridiculous. The blackboard is an admirable 
contrivance for the display of leading ideas 
of a lesson, if well used. But there are few 
educational machines which can more easily 
be made vehicles of nonsense than this same 
blackboard. 

A catalogue of all the queer things I have 
seen chalked on blackboards in a course of 
several years of convention and institute 
work, would be more appropriate to the col- 
umns of some humorous newspaper than to 
the pages of a serious book like this. And 
the hundreds and thousands of odd blunders, 
infelicities, and other curious things, which 
other people have seen executed on black- 
boards, or, not having seen, have " heard tell 



The Blackboard in the Sitnday-ScJiooL 163 

of, would make a cyclopedia of blackboard- 
ology, " too numerous to mention." I once 
saw a blackboard on which was chalked a 
panorama of most of the leading events in 
the journey of Bunyans Pilgrim. It was 
aw ftd ! John Bunyan would have howled, 
could he have seen it. I once saw a dear 
brother do an elaborate pictorial exercise in 
chalk, representing " the broad way " and 
" the strait and narrow way." The broad 
way was broad enough, and the narrow way 
was narrow enough ; but unhappily these two 
ways led to two gates in the same stone wall, 
and opening into the same inclosure ! The 
brother taught his lesson, but seemed to be 
entirely oblivious to the fact that he had 
made such a shocking blunder. The point 
of the lesson as given in the Bible is that it 
makes a difference for all eternity which road 
you take. Its point, as placed on the black- 
board, was that you may take which road you 
please, and either will bring you out right. 

It is discouraging business to chalk on 
blackboards for people who come to conven- 
tions and institutes to see a sort of educa- 
tional raree-show. They expect to see some- 



164 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

thing wonderful. If they do not, they are 
dissatisfied. If you put a few bold words, or 
letters, on the board, or a simple diagram, 
you are apt to hear " O, pshaw ! any body 
can do that!" If you succeed in giving 
something rather more elaborate, something 
which is a gem of art, or a triumph of success 
in the way of a plain exposition of a lesson, 
so plain that any child can receive a lasting 
impression from it, and so easily understood 
that he who runs may read it, somebody 
rises and asks, " Mr. Cheerman, is that ere 
practicable? Can / do it ? I want some- 
thing that I can do?" If you write in a 
rough and careless manner, it seems so easy 
that any boy could do as well with a bit of 
chalk on a cellar door. But' if you vie with 
the most accomplished professor of chirogra- 
phy in the tasteful execution of beautifully 
formed letters, Mr. Thickhead dejectedly an- 
nounces that he will, on reaching home, de- 
posit his blackboard in the church-cellar, for 
he can never hope to do chalk-work like that. 
There seems to be a lack of understanding 
in some quarters as to what constitutes a 
good blackboard. Many excellent people 



The Blackboard in tlie Sunday- School. 165 . 

consider any piece of timber, rough or 
smooth, thick or thin, knotty or clear-grained, 
a proper appliance for the reception of chalk 
marks, provided it is coated with some black 
pigment. Although a board painted black 
is, indeed, a black board, yet it may be black, 
and may be a board, without being a black- 
board. 

The shocking substitutes for good black- 
boards, which are sometimes furnished, are 
worthy of mention, not as examples for imi- 
tation, but as hints of what may be avoided 
or improved upon. It is with them much as 
in the matter of making coffee, as suggested 
by Mr. Beecher, He says, "If you want to 
know how to make good coffee, go to the 
principal railroad eating houses, hotels, etc., 
and see how they make it ; and then make it 
as they dontr 

It is annoying, when a speaker goes to a 
public gathering of teachers, where black- 
board exercises are expected of him, to find 
that the board is altogether unsuited to the 
purpose. Particularly so, if the people have 
set their minds on seeing some chalky dem- 
onstrations. I once traveled a night and a 



1 66 



Peeps at Our' Sunday-Schools. 



day to try to edify some brethren who desired 
information on the mysteries of blackboard- 
ography, and who had promised to provide a 
good blackboard for the occasion. The board 
was good enough, what there was of it ; but 
it was only about the size of an ordinary pie- 
board ! Several hundred young folks and 
their seniors were present, to see and hear 
the " exercise." There was no possibility of 
making an exercise on that pie-board large 
enough to "go round." Some good brother 
thought of a board at a female boarding 
school. It was immediately sent for, and 
when brought in, proved to be made of two 
pieces of lumber one inch thick, eight inches 
wide, cleated together/the naiUheads sticking 
out ; one side originally painted black, but 
most of the paint worn off. We had an 
" exercise " on it, which sorely exercised the 
patience of the man who held the chalk, and 
probably of the congregation too, 

A common difficulty with blackboards is 
that they are too smooth, by reason of old 
age and much use. The custom, in former 
years, was to aim q.t obtaining as smooth a 
surface as possible, generally nicely var- 



The Blackboard i7i the Sunday- School. 167 

nished, and without sufficient grit* to take 
hold of the chalk. A board thus coated 
wears entirely too smooth in a few years, and 
the chalk slips over it, as if the surface were 
greased, and without leaving sufficient mark. 
Boards which are borrowed from boarding 
schools and similar establishments for Sun- 
day-school use on special occasions, are fre- 
quently open to this objection. It gives solid 
comfort to know that, in many instances, the 
old boards of these institutions are nailed to 
the walls, and cannot be lent out. 

Age is, of itself, no objection to a board/ 
provided the board was originally made of 
smooth and well-seasoned stuff. A good old 
board, which has been carefully used, and the 
coating of which has been occasionally re- 
newed, is better than a new one. An old 
board of unseasoned stuff, with a large crack 
running the whole length of it across the 
middle, with the nails loose, and the blacking 
nearly all worn off, and with dents and scratch- 
es on its surface, indicating that in holiday 
time it has been used by the boys as plank 
for a steamboat, or platform for a railroad 
train, may be chopped up for kindling wood, 



168 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

rather than used for the demonstration of 
Bible lessons, either to adults or youths. 

Music may profitably be studied with the 
help of a blackboard on which the lines are 
painted. But the musical board is often a 
nuisance, 'when made to serve for Sunday- 
school purposes. The painted lines are 
always in the way, and confuse whatever you 
put on the board. You are invited to give a 
blackboard exercise somewhere or other. 
Your first question is, " Have you a nice 
blackboard?" "O yes, a very fine one; the 
one Professor Singinski used when he taught 
the school music." You suspect at once 
what is the matter with it, and sure enough, 
when, on the shoulders of two boys, it arrives 
from the cellar, and when the dust and cob- 
webs are brushed from it, you discover that 
it admirably answered the purpose of the 
musical professor. Two feet wide, eight feet 
long, ten lines neatly painted on it, it is good 
for musical exercises, and for nothing else. 

One afternoon, having chalked all over a 
board, I asked the sexton (one of the most 
obliging men I ever met) if he would accom- 
modate* me by having the board nicely 



The Blackboard in the Sunday- School. 169 

cleaned for the evening exercise. He not 
only promised that it should be clean, but 
that his wife would give it her personal at- 
tention. With this assurance that feminine 
enterprise was to be employed on it, I made 
myself easy, and was confident that the board 
would be in good order for the evening. 
Sure enough, it looked as fresh and black as 
if there had never been a chalk mark on it. 
At the proper time I brought the chalk in 
contact with its surface before an expectant 
congregation, but not a mark would it make ! 
A trial of the reverse side of the board pro- 
duced similar want of good result. What 
was the matter ? The good woman had 
scrubbed the board with a scrubbing brush 
and brown soap ! The soap had left a film 
on the surface, which made the chalk slip 
over it as if on plate glass ! Lesson : not to 
use soap in cleaning your board. 

A poor coating is a great objection. The 
coating should be such as to produce an 
even, dull surface. A bright, varnished sur- 
face is of no advantage in any respect. There 
are several patent coatings advertised, each 
of which claims to be the best. A proper 



170 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

coating has grit enough to hold enough of 
the chalk to secure a legible mark, and is 
smooth enough to admit of rubbing the mark 
out when you are done with it. If you can 
get nothing better, black paint with fine flour 
of emery well mixed in it, will answer. The 
cost is trifling, but care must be observed in 
laying it on evenly, and in keeping the mix- 
ture well stirred while you are putting it on. 
A very good way to get a blackboard, is to 
buy one ready made. The dealers in school 
furniture keep them at prices so low that it 
is hardly worth while to take the trouble of 
putting one together and blacking it, unless 
you are an expert at such matters, and are 
positively sure your lumber is well seasoned. 
Do not, for the sake of saving a dollar or 
two, get one that is too small. A board 
three feet wide and four feet long is the 
smallest that is good for any thing beyond 
the use of small infant-school rooms. One 
that is a foot larger each way will be vastly 
better ; it costs but a trifle more. Remem- 
ber, that though the man who chalks is so 
close to the board that he can see every thing 
he put on it, yet he must chalk for the vision 



The Blackboard in the Sunday- School. 171 

of the people who sit in the most distant 
corner of the house. 

The best blackboard I ever saw or used 
was no board at all. It was in a church. 
The church had been reconstructed, and it 
occurred to the pastor that the space in the 
rear of the desk could be made more useful 
in this way than by ornamenting it with the 
fanciful colonnade so generally botched in 
perspective behind our pulpits. So he mixed 
about twenty-five cents' worth of lamp black 
in the finishing coat of plaster, and spread 
the black mixture over a space about ten feet 
wide and twelve feet high. This black part 
of the wall being neatly surrounded by an 
arched molding, looks better than some of 
the hideous colonnades referred to, and fur- 
nishes a surface which is more like real slate 
than almost any of the slate imitations. You 
cannot well upset this blackboard, nor does it 
wobble about, as some boards do, when you 
write on it. 

A prominent trouble with blackboard ex- 
ercises is that the operator tries to make a 
great many points instead of concentrating 
his labor, and the attention of his auditors, 



172 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

and spectators, on one or two. Sdme breth- 
ren try to put on the blackboard all that 
they know on the subject of the lesson they 
are trying to explain. This confuses the 
hearers, crowds the blackboard, and wastes 
time, patience, and chalk. 

But don't be discouraged, good brother, 
with your blackboard. It is a noble help, if 
you will but use it wisely. If you have failed 
in your use of it, " try, try again." If you 
have been too tedious with your exercises, 
and have sorely exercised the patience and 
forbearance of those who were present, and 
felt like pushing you and your blackboard 
into the street, try to be shorter next time. 
I knew a good brother who occupied an hour 
and a quarter in executing a blackboard ex- 
ercise. The people who were bored with it 
thought it was marvelous. But they never 
asked him again. 



The Sunday-School Exchequer. 173 



XXVII. 

WHEREVER religious, or missionary, 
or benevolent works are carried on, 
there will be heard the clink of the inevitable 
dollar. We may call it an evil, if we choose, 
but if so, we must admit it to be a necessary 
evil, and one that will exist as long as we 
transact business in a world where dollars 
are the circulating medium. The Sunday- 
school is no exception in money matters. 
Its expenses must be provided for in some 
way. Funds must be raised by the children 
to carry on beneficent enterprises among do- 
mestic or foreign heathen. A Sunday-school 
which would ignore the existence of money, 
and the continual need for handling that 
much-coveted article, might stand in fear of 
the blotting out of its own existence. 

The Church ought to provide for the cur- 
rent expenses of its Sunday-school, just as 



i/4 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

the father of a family pays the bills for the 
food his children eat. An outside school, 
which is not fathered by any Church, is com- 
pelled to make its living in the best way it 
can, generally by trusting to the generosity 
of its friends ; sometimes by giving concerts, 
lectures, and shows. Many a mission-school, 
in the poverty of its orphanage, is under the 
necessity of permanently engaging in a sort 
of moral menagerie business, which is, to say 
the best of it, a dangerous expedient. In its' 
struggle for existence, it is likely to allow 
this element of seeming prosperity to crowd 
out a large part of its religious vitality. 

There are some Sunday-schools whose 
scholars are sent round among their friends 
on the beggarly business of soliciting sub- 
scriptions and donations for the support of 
the schools. With small pass-books, the chil- 
dren force themselves before the faces of all 
whom they meet, and make themselves 
odious to their relations and neighbors, and 
even to strangers in the street. I have be$n 
at Sunday-schools where children with pass- 
books have thus passed round among the 
whole company of visitors who happened to 



The Sunday-School Exchequer. 175 

be present, asking each one for a contribu- 
tion, to the great annoyance of the visitors. 
The money given in response to such beggary 
can hardly be called the gift of charity. It 
is more likely to be given in the spirit mani- 
fested by ferry-boat passengers when they 
toss coppers to beggar-boys, in order to per- 
suade the boys to pass on and cease troubling 
them. No school ever became very prosper- 
ous as a result of practicing this description 
of pious fraud. 

There is a science in taking up a collec- 
tion. At anniversaries, and other public 
meetings in behalf of the school, there is 
great propriety in asking the congregation 
for money. It is equally proper to collect 
from the children their weekly contributions 
in behalf of some worthy object outside of 
the school. To make children contribute for 
the school expenses is hardly fair. At stated 
"missionary meetings" it is well to recount 
the donations, and publicly consecrate them 
to the missionary purpose for which they 
have been giv.en. Even in this we need 
great caution, to avoid running into mis- 
chief. The emulation between classes as to 



176 Peeps at Our Sunday- Schools. 

which shall give the most money, is, to a 
certain extent, wholesome, yet loaded with 
danger if carried too far. A wealthy teacher 
can always manage to keep his class pecun- 
iarily ahead of those whose teachers are not 
blessed with the goods of this world. An 
enterprising boy or girl in a class may suc- 
ceed In out-begging the rest of the school, to 
such an extent as to take the lead in the list 
of moneys donated. A Sunday-school is in 
a bad way when it designates as its " banner 
class" the one which brings in the most 
money. 

When divested of its objectionable feat- 
ures, the bringing in of class contributions 
constitutes a pleasant feature in a public 
exercise. In many schools the classes are 
called by fancy names, or named in compli- 
ment to some " friend of the cause." The 
announcement of these names, with the 
amounts given by each name-bearing class, 
often adds interest to the occasion, if the 
names are not too queer. At a mission- 
ary quarterly meeting, not long ago, among 
11 Busy Bees," " Little Lilies," " Willing Work- 
ers," and similar beautiful names, the secre- 



The Sunday-School Exchequer. 177 

tary announced " Friends of the Heathen." 
Of course, it was but natural to look for a 
substantial contribution from a class bearing 
such a name ; but the response to the call 
was, " Friends of the Heathen, nothing? 
The thought could not help struggling into 
the heads of some of the visitors present 
that the fewer such " friends " the heathen 
had, the better off they would be. 

At some of these meetings the brother 
who does the actual handling of the money 
becomes a general nuisance. He has no 
specific desire to disturb the meeting, yet 
he manages to inflict much botheration both 
on speaker and listeners, for he is so full of 
the thought % of the money that his soul can 
find no room for any other ideas. Some- 
times the offerings are packed up in neat 
envelopes, or boxes, or bags, and handed to 
the secretary in a decorous manner. But 
where good Brother Jinglechink is the vis- 
ible financial man, the noise and confusion 
of handling the loose change quench the 
decorum of the occasion. A heavily shod 
child stamps up from each class, ostenta- 
tiously bearing the money, which is for the 
12 



178 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

most part in nickel or copper coins. Brother 
Jinglechink announces each amount, as re- 
ceived, and the heavily shod child stamps 
back, sometimes with a broad grin on its 
face. The cash having been brought in, the 
" distinguished speaker" from abroad, or else- 
where, follows, with his remarks. While he 
is making them, Jinglechink and two or three 
of his coadjutors are counting the coins on 
an adjacent table. Little do they care for 
the annoyance inflicted on the speaker. To 
count the money is their business ; to make 
the speech is his. It never occurs to their 
minds that the man can be disturbed by their 
pecuniary exercises* And if they would think 
of it, it is probable that they would reflect 
that he ought to have a soul above such 
things, and that, having such a soul, it is his 
duty to possess it in patience. 

It sometimes occurs that Brother Jingle- 
chink has charge of the money interests of a 
Sunday-school Convention or Institute. Al- 
most every speaker knows him, fr^m sorry 
experience. One of his efforts is very dis- 
tinctly impressed on my memory. It was in 
a country town, at an Institute held in a 



The Sunday- School Exchequer. 179 

church which was packed so full of people 
that the basket carriers had difficulty in 
going through the aisles to take the collec- 
tion. The baskets were brought to Jingle- 
chink, who emptied their contents into one 
great heap on the platform just as I had 
begun to make my speech. The people were* 
in splendid condition for listening, and I 
thought I was going to enjoy large liberty in 
addressing them. But Jinglechink spoiled it 
all. The pile of coin and currency was just 
at my feet, and he commenced to count it 
with all the deliberation and importance of a 
third assistant cashier behind a broker's 
counter. I confess that I felt a strong dispo- 
sition to foot up his miserable collection by 
kicking it from the platform, for to do that 
would have been both convenient and effect- 
ive. But prudential considerations restrained 
me, and, letting him go on, I brought my 
speech to a speedy conclusion. Philip Phil- 
lips then sang one of his most touching solos ; 
but the obtuse Jinglechink, not yet having 
finished his count, kept bravely on with his 
worrisome accompaniment to the music, to 
the annoyance of all concerned. 



i8o Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

We need money, and we need sound judg- 
ment in gathering it. The Sunday-school 
work is too noble to be marred with the in- 
felicities which so often attend on providing 
the means for its maintenance. It is worthy 
of our most energetic endeavors, our most 
generous contributions, and the greatest wis- 
dom we can bring to bear on all the details 
of its management. Whether in the handling 
of the child's gratefully offered penny, or the 
receipt and disbursement of the dead million- 
aire's legacy, " let all things be done decently 
and in order." 



The Teacher Asleep. 181 



XXVIII. 

LET us take a glimpse at the sleeping- 
teacher. Not asleep in his class, for if 
he slumber there his influence is gone. A 
good brother who was teaching a class of 
Chinamen in San Francisco was overcome 
by weariness, and began to show signs of 
coming slumber. He was startled into wake- 
fulness by one of his pupils exclaiming, 
" Melican man better wakee up if want to 
teachee us ! " 

In the class the teacher needs the most 
wakeful concentration of every energy on his 
work. But, in order that the hours of work 
and wakefulness be well spent, it is of the 
highest importance that the teacher have, in 
addition to all other qualifications, a sound 
mind in a healthy body. To insure this, a 
proper quantity of a most excellent quality 
of sleep is one of the first requisites. It is at 



1 82 Peeps at Our Sunday-%chools. 

least as important to sleep well, as to eat well. 
Such a blessed gift from God as the sleep 
which " he giveth his beloved " cannot be too 
highly prized. Its blessedness is not always 
properly appreciated till, by repeated viola- 
tions of the laws of health, the gift has been 
-wasted and is gone. The victim of mental 
worry or of bodily dyspepsia may toss and 
flounder over his bed at night, like a menag- 
erie beast in his cage, awaking in the morn- 
ing unrefreshed, and in all probability un- 
thankful. Such loss of sleep is apt to result 
in a most unlovely condition of mind, as well 
as ,a dilapidated state of body. 

The mystery of the refreshing power of 
sleep defies the efforts of the most acute 
physiological analysis. Whether it is the 
rest, the inaction, the silence, the darkness, 
the suspension of consciousness, or all these 
combined, that confer the benefit on th£ 
sleeper, nobody knows. 

All other things being equal, the teacher 
who sleeps well will do a better work among 
his scholars, than he who rises distressed by 
a night of restless tossing and weary en- 
deavor to obtain repose. The scholars know 



The Teacher Asleep. 183 

the difference between the fre^h teacher and 
the weary one. The fresh one realizes a 
sense of enjoyment of his teaching, and hope- 
ful interest in it, to w r hich the weary one is a 
stranger. The weary one looks darkly on 
the future of his class, and, often with good 
reason, is discouraged and despondent be- 
cause he is accomplishing no good result. 

To sleep well, then, is a duty, if we can 
accomplish it. Staying in bed is not always 
sleeping. There are people who spend eight 
or nine unsatisfactory hours in bed, and do 
not know how to get good sleep or to enjoy 
it. People of this class sometimes most vig- 
orously denounce the thoughtful person who 
spends five or six hours in bed, and who falls 
asleep the moment his head touches the 
pillow, and sleeps soundly till it is time to 
arise. There are a great many people who 
sleep poorly, who might as well enjoy a good 
night's rest if they would but do it. A mind 
ill at ease and full of the worries of a day's 
business will cause its owner a restless night. 
A pair of lungs, crowded and constricted by 
improper clothing during the day, will punish 
during the night the human being who has 



1 84 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

imposed upon their good nature. An over- 
worked or otherwise badly treated stomach 
exercises its right to raise a rebellion in the 
darkest hours of the night, and repay with 
interest the injustice done it. A brain that 
has been too busily worked up to the very 
moment of tumbling into bed, will execute 
vengeance by dreaming outrageous dreams, 
seeing woeful visions, and raising such an 
aching in the head to which it belongs as 
to arouse the sleeper from what seems to him 
evidently the jumping-off place to the most 
frightful part of the regions of despair. 

If we have had worries and troubles and 
annoyances during the day, let us try to roll 
them off at night, and not make bedfellows 
of them. If, we have had burdens to bear, 
let us cast them on the Lord, and he will 
carry them for us. If we have a great deal 
of mental labor to perform, let us do it in the 
hours in which we ought to be awake, and 
not seek to economize time by working out 
problems, manufacturing sermons or essays, 
studying out our lessons, or figuring up our 
accounts; in the wakeful hours ,of darkness 
when we ought to be asleep. It is a wretched 



The Teacher Asleep. 185 

and ruinous economy, which will eventually 
wreck the economist who practices it. 

Go to bed happy. See that the body 
which God has given you is in good order, 
an undefiled " temple of the Holy Ghost." 
In each and all of its functions, let it rightly 
perform its duties. Never try to induce 
sleep by taking any narcotics or opiates what- 
ever, unless, when suffering the agonies of 
neuralgia or its equivalent, a respectable 
doctor tells you what to take, and exactly 
how much. Sooner or later, they are certain 
destruction. Sleep in a well-ventilated room, 
whether warm or cold ; a room containing 
nothing noxious to be inhaled by the lungs ; 
a room which is tastefully, cheerfully fur- 
nished, and as neatly kept as circumstances 
will allow. Untidiness is an abomination. 
Uncleanliness is blasphemy. With your soul 
at peace with itself, its fellow-beings, and its 
God, commit all your interests to Him whose 
eye never closes, and who lovingly and gent- 
ly comes to the bedside of his weary child ; 
" for so he giveth his beloved sleep." 

And when the time for sleep is over, and 
the golden sunshine sends its ever-welcome 



1 86 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

message to eye, and heart, and mind, and 
soul, thankfully rise in the strength of the 
God of the morning, rejoicing in his love and 
care, and diligently go forth to the work of 
the day. 

"For so he giveth his beloved sleep."— Psa. cxxvii, 2. 
I lay my weary head to rest 
Upon my loving Father's breast ; 
On mountain top, or raging deep, 
My Father puts his child to sleep. 

Though snares and dangers round me stand, 
He holds me in his mighty hand ; 
He orders all things for the best, 
And gives my soul refreshing rest. 

Though fears disturb me in the night, 

My Father's love is infinite ; 

He kindly stands beside my bed, 

And gently soothes my throbbing head. 

When vexed with grief and racked with pain, 
My Father doth my soul sustain ; 
He doth his child in safety keep ; 
He giveth his beloved sleep. 

And when upon my bed of death 
I yield to thee my latest breath, 
Then, in thy love, so broad, so deep, 

O, Father, put thy child to sleep. 

i 

To sleep in Christ, to toil no more, 

My wanderings forever o'er — * 

Then to thyself my spirit take, 

And bid thy child in glory wake ! 



Procrustes in the Sunday-School, 187 



XXIX. 

IF we may credit ancient tradition, Pro- 
crustes was a strong-fisted person inhab- 
iting a locality in Greece, where he made 
himself disagreeable to passing travelers by 
the exercise of a very peculiar sort of hospi- 
tality. His principal piece of furniture ap- 
pears to have been an iron bedstead, about 
large enough to accommodate a man of aver- 
age size. To this he would consign those 
whom he could induce to lodge with him, 
probably with much of the elegant imperi- 
ousness of manner that characterizes the 
first-class hotel clerk of modern days. Pro- 
crustes was more thorough in his attentions 
than the hotel clerks are, for he would not 
only send his lodgers to bed, but would put 
them away for the night. Anxious that each 
lodger should fit the bed with exactness, he 
had a fashion of chopping off the feet of the 



1 88 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

guests who were too long for it, and, by an in- 
genious process, which he may have patented, 
but which has not been handed down to 
these times, he stretched out the short ones, 
so as to make them long enough for a com- 
fortable fit. We do not read whether or not 
anybody ever lodged with him a second time. 

Strange as it may seem, there are excellent 
men of these latter days, who, in a certain 
branch of Christian effort, follow to some ex- 
tent the example set them by this crusty old 
heathen. True, there is no actual bedstead 
introduced into the Sunday-school, but there 
is tob frequently an iron regulation, rigidly 
enforced by that tinkling piece of hardware 
which is the standing abomination of every 
speaker who has nearly done his speech, but 
who fears that if he runs two minutes over 
the allotted time he will be chopped off, and 
compelled to cause his hearers to wonder 
what he would have said in ^conclusion. 

Procrustes is superintendent of a Sunday- 
school. Bell in hand, he mangles v the open- 
ing hymn by chopping on two of the best of 
its five verses. Does it spoil the sense of a 
beautiful hymn? No matter; it makes the 



Procrustes in the Sunday-School. 189 

singing fit the little iron bed appointed for 
it. He utters his opening prayer in such a 
way that the desire to be through with it in 
two minutes and a half by the clock seems 
to be uppermost* in his mind, rather than any 
thing he is asking God for. When the hour 
for the teaching of the lesson expires, with- 
out a momrents warning, or a gentle premon- 
itory tap of the bell, bang J goes the cruel 
instrument of torture, as much as to say, 
" There, now, quit your teaching ! time's up !" 
Promptness and punctuality are invaluable 
in every department of the school, but Pro- 
crustes errs in overdoing the matter. 

Sometimes we find Procrustes officiating 
as chairman of a convention. Taking the 
hint from some excellent chairmen who have 
a way of stopping the discourse of long- 
winded men, he overdoes the business by 
putting his finger on the bell almost as soon 
as a speaker begins his remarks ; and, look- 
ing by turns at his bell, his watch, and the 
speaker, intimates that the conclusion of the 
speech is the most important part of it, and 
that he hopes that the speaker will on no ac- 
count transgress, by the fraction of a minute, 



190 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

the appointed limit. Such chairmanship is 
enough to embarrass almost any speaker, 
and render almost valueless a discussion 
which is carried on under such stiff regula- 
tions. But it is worse, when the speech is 
nearly finished that is made by appointment. 
The invited speaker, who has come from a 
distance — let us say a thousand miles — and 
who has prepared himself expressly for the 
subject in hand, finds, on looking at the pro- 
gramme, that he is expected to condense his 
wisdom into twenty minutes by the clock and 
bell. It will go, we will suppose, into half an 
hour. He boils it down, as well as the lim- 
ited time for additional preparation will per- 
mit, leaving out here a little, and there a 
good deal, till he thinks he has brought it 
within the prescribed measure. He is intro- 
duced to his hearers in connection with the 
announcement that his speech will continue 
for twenty minutes. He proceeds. At the 
expiration of nineteen minutes and a half he 
is in the midst of a splendid peroration, 
which will take about three minutes to finish. 
The audience listen in breathless attention. 
The inexorable chairman puts his finger on 



Procrustes in the Sunday- School. 191 

the bell, and looks at his watch. The 
speaker looks at him, as much as to say, 
"Hold on; I will be done in a minute or 
two." No use. The half minute rapidly 
goes. Twenty minutes up. Chop ! goes the 
Procrustean ax, and the speaker and his 
speech have their feet taken off. The speak- 
er does wish that some man of reasonably 
good sense had been put in charge of the 
meeting, and resolves not to come again 
where that man presides. 

At an Institute where certain exercises 
are appointed to come on in succession, Pro- 
crustes is sometimes put in charge of the work 
of getting up the programme. The Institute 
then seems to be gotten up for the benefit of 
the programme, rather than the programme 
for the Institute. Five or six speeches are 
appointed, to occupy the time which should 
have been occupied by three ; the hour and 
minute at which each will begin and conclude, 
are printed, as the railroad companies print 
their time-tables ; and the remark is also 
printed, "This programme will be strictly 
adhered to" Each speaker has a chopped- 
off feeling during every moment of his 



192 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

speech, and the result is the absence of that 
large liberty which is so profitable to all who 
know how to enjoy it. 

As to the error in the other direction, just 
a word. When the original Procrustes got 
hold of a man too short for his bed, he 
stretched him. It does not often happen 
that a^chairman has to stretch a speakers 
speech, so as to make it fill the allotted time. 
But it sometimes happens that a man who 
is short of material to fill the time, fills it out, 
either by a heavy apology at the beginning, 
or by saying several times over, what might 
have been profitably said only once ; or by 
saying nothing for a while during the con- 
cluding part of his talk. This kind of stretch- 
ing is uncomfortable to all concerned. When 
a man has said all he has to say he should 
stop, whether his allotted time is three min- 
utes or sixty. 

Let us be prompt and punctual, but not 
ferocious in our promptness or punctuality. 

While we must allot certain time to certain 
speakers, let us try to arrange our time-tables 
for the mutual comfort of the speakers and 
those who are spoken to. 



Procrustes in the Sunday- School. 193 

A speaker who is known to be a bore, need 
not be invited to speak at all. If a man of 
whom better things are expected proves to 
be wearisome and unprofitable, and must be 
chopped off, it is better to chop him as soon 
as he makes full proof of his tediousness, 
than to wait for the fulfillment of any allotted 
time, long or short. 

13 



194 Peeps at Qur Sunday-Schools. 



XXX. 

WE need a little variety in our year's 
work. It is not only because we have 
juvenile people to deal with, but because 
variety is a necessity for humanity, old or 
young. The appetite for variety which, in 
the youthful heart, finds satisfaction in a 
picnic or a Sunday-school festival, demon- 
strates itself, in adult humanity, in the desire 
for a railroad director's dinner, an evening 
party, or a religious banquet. From the 
hearts of some adult Christians, the desire 
for this sort of variety has entirely dried put ; 
leaving, in its stead, an unpleasant habit of 
criticising and reproving young people. It 
is a sorrowful sight to see a cross aunt at 
table, with a company of joyful children, lying 
in wait for every expression they may utter, 
which may happen to be on her list of con- 
traband sayings, or to see her when they are 
trying to play in the room where she sits 



The Anniversary Business. 195 

austerely over her kn/tting. I once kept 
count at a meal where such a skeleton was 
present in her disciplinary mood. She cor- 
rected one bright little child seventeen times, 
and another nine and in each instance for 
alleged breaches of politeness and proper 
table deportment. The monotony of the 
thing became oppressive. The most really 
impolite thing at the table was the demeanor 
of the crabbed old aunt herself. 

It is a poor business to bring children up 
with a monotonous exemption from joydays. 
Give them Christmas, New Year's, and the 
Fourth of July; let their birthdays be de- 
lightful oases in the journey of their lives. 
Make Thanksgiving Day glorious to them, 
and on the Lord's day let their gladness 
ascend to heaven in an all-day halleluia of 
gratitude. But with all the joy and the 
variety we can throw into a child's life, it 
frequently happens that the festive enjoyment 
of a whole year culminates in a rousing An- 
niversary Day. 

To the child born of wealthy parents, and 
living in a magnificent house, well furnished, 
and stocked with Christmas and birthday 



196 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

presents in season, tRe Sunday-school anni- 
versary may be a comparatively small affair. 
The net value of portable property given to 
each child on the occasion, is necessarily 
small. The child from a family in humble 
circumstances is overjoyed with a box of 
candy or a bundle of sweetmeats, or a little 
book, or a toy monkey which jumps over a 
stick. The wreathings and decorations of a 
Christmas festival send joy to the heart of 
many a child ; and the carrying of a banner 
in a May-day procession makes the young- 
ster as happy as ever Napoleon Bonaparte 
was at the head of an army. 

A decently conducted anniversary is an 
advantage and a blessing. The welcoming 
of parents, friends, and patrons, that they 
may see what the school is, so that they may 
take an interest in it, is wholesome to all con- 
cerned. There is no harm in a good, boun- 
cing* demonstration ; giving thanks for the 
work of the past, and with hopeful good cheer 
looking forward to that of the future. Let 
there be plenty of music, abundance of script- 
ural exercises, and a wealth of good and wise 
speaking, if men can be found who will do it. . 



iThe Anniversary Business. 197 

It is a painfully public fact that in some 
quarters the ridiculous and absurd features 
of the anniversary business have been the 
prominent ones. Certain infant prodigies, who 
ought to have been in bed, have been trotted 
out on cold nights to exhibit their proficiency 
in reciting dialogues, poems, or speeches. 
Long winded and empty harangues have 
been delivered by tedious orators, who have 
made public proof of their ignorance of the 
proper time for bringing their remarks to a 
conclusion, as well as of their ridiculous incom- 
petence to address % an assembly of children. 
There has been an unwarrantable amount 
of buffoonery, wishy-washy oratory, semi-the- 
atrical performance, and wretchedly poor 
music. Such things have inflicted material 
injury on the Sunday-school cause, among 
people who know the institution only as it is 
set forth to them in these demonstrations, 
and who care little about taking the trouble 
to look further into it. The impression must 
be a very curious one, which is made on a 
parent or friend who comes only on anniver- 
sary day, and who sees a high-pressure per- 
formance, such as many of our schools delight 



198 Peeps at Our Sunday-tSchools. 

in. For instance, having never been present 
at the regular teaching exercises of. the 
school, he comes to a grotesque Christmas 
pageant. Santa Claus, dressed in a buffalo 
overcoat, comes down a wooden imitation of 
a brick chimney, and this exercise is followed 
by the distribution of, and tooting on, tin 
horns and penny trumpets. Candies, cakes, 
oranges, and other goodies, are liberally 
handed around ; some funny speeches are 
made, and some pieces sung in which the 
comic and the religious are so intimately 
mixed that the inquiring stranger experi- 
ences much botheration in trying to find out 
which is which. 

^ Sometimes it is the speech department 
that is curious. Several men are invited, 
each to make a speech. No adult people 
want to listen /to more than one sermon at a 
time, if their listening is at all with a view to 
carrying away what they hear. But the poor 
children are thoughtlessly crammed with four 
or five speeches on different subjects, (and 
sometimes on no subject at all,) following in 
rapid succession, and fenced off from each 
other only by hymns. It is hard on the chil- 



The Anniversary Business. 199 

dren ; hard on the speakers, too, for it is ask- 
ing them to do good and communicates at a 
heavy disadvantage. Sometimes the speak- 
ers are such dull people that they put the 
children to sleep. If a very wearisome man 
has the first half hour at them, his successors 
have difficult work to wake them up. I was 
once present at an anniversary where the pas- 
tor of the Church spoke nearly forty minutes. 
He commenced by telling the children that 
they would probably understand but little of 
what he said, for he was going to speak prin- 
cipally to their parents. He was just as good 
as his word. The infant class sat in front, and 
the teacher, a dear, good old man, who went 
to heaven three or four years ago, kindly kept 
them awake by pleasantly going round among 
them and punching them with a small stick. 
At some anniversaries a stray specimen of 
the outrageous speaker wanders along, amus- 
ing some of the people, worrying the rest, 
and making them all wish that he had stayed 
away. Here is a sample of the speech of 
such a genius ; not a fancy sample, but one 
taken down verbatim by an intimate and 
perfectly reliable friend who heard it deliv- 



200 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

ered. It was within one hundred miles of 
New York city : 

" Youve heard two very fine speeches 
from gentlemen with books, but I don't want 
any. I've spoken a hundred times, and never 
used a note in my life. What I done once, 
I can do again. I can interest you. I know 
it. I've done it a hundred times, and I know 
what I can do. You can't keep your eyes ' 
off of me. You've got to listen. Now look 
here; I* used to live in the country when I 
waa a boy. I had a mother. She was a good 
mother. All mothers are good, you think. 
My ma once told me to dig up a pear-tree 
which was by the house, and have it sot out 
in the garden. Now, look here, boys, that 
pear-tree growed just a.s I growed. I went 
away, and traveled all about the country, 
and saw a great many things — hundreds of 
things, thousands of things- — and I know it. 
I've been in hundreds of cities, and thousands 
of Sunday-schools. I've talked before. I 
know what I'm talking about. I always in- 
terest children, and I know I can do it again. 
I can speak a half an hour without notes, but 
I didn't come here to make a speech, only %§ 



The Anniversary Business, 201 

a substitute for another man. Now, all these 
fine speeches wont do you no good, unless 
you put them on the shelf, and take them 
down and use them once in a while. That 
brother there is laughing ; says he can't help 
it ; I heerd him speak ; so did you. That 
pear-tree growed all the time I was away. 
You will grow, children. Don't forget to 
take those things off from the shelf. Now 
IVe made you a good speech, and I know it. 
It wont do you no good unless you put it on 
the shelf." 

Let us be thankful that such speeches are 
not very common in our best schools. 

The way in which the secretary magnifies 
his office on anniversary occasions is some- 
times exceedingly worthy of notice. The 
comparative privacy of the ordinary routine 
of his official business is then exchanged for 
an appearance in public, and the reading of 
a written report on the preparation of which 
he has exercised his best energies. If he is a 
man of sound common sense, and makes a 
report which combines brevity with pointed- 
ness, all is well. If he is a pompqus and 
magniloquent person, his first appearance in 



202 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

public is coupled with the hope, on the part 
of his hearers, that it will be his last 

Too frequently the secretary's report is a 
piece of composition of such stilted style 
that a school-boy executing the like would 
be severely punished by his teacher at school, 
and by his parents on reaching home. Some- 
times it begins by saying that " Another year 
has rolled around," and sometimes by stat- 
ing that " The inevitable revolution of the 
seasons bring us again- to that period of the 
year at which we are called upon to give an 
account of our stewardship." Once in a while 
we hear from the secretary that " time, in its 
ceaselessly revolving cycles, has completed 
in our history another of those periods the 
recurrence of which is appropriately marked 
by our assembling in the capacity of an anni- 
versary occasion." After relieving himself 
of a few specimens of this kind of literature, 
the secretary goes on to give facts, incidents, 
and statistics concerning the history of the 
school, the whole being elaborated with pain- 
ful tediousness, and spun out to the length 
of an ordinary sermon. 

At an anniversary which I some time ago 



The Anniversary Business. 203 

attended, the Mission-school was present with 
the Church-school in the church. The sec- 
retary of the Church-school occupied about 
twenty-five minutes in reading his report. 
Then followed the secretary of the Mission- 
school, nearly as elaborate, quite as ridicu- 
lous, and wasting about twenty precious 
minutes. The condition of the children, who. 
were to listen to three speakers, after hear- 
ing this weary rigmarole of facts and figures, 
may be imagined. If these secretaries had 
read the Declaration of Independence, or the 
multiplication table, or a few pages from 
Martin Farquhar Tupper's " Proverbial Phi- 
losophy," it would have been at least as 
edifying. 

All the facts necessary to be conveyed to 
an anniversary congregation in a secretary's 
report can be condensed into very small 
space. They can be printed at trifling ex- 
pense. They can be put on the blackboard 
with very little trouble. They can often be 
omitted without positively dangerous results. 
Almost any disposition of them is better 
than to annoy, with their tiresome detail, a 
congregation gathered for other purposes. 



204 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

But there are thousands of common-sense 
anniversaries which are free from these ob- 
jectionable features. An anniversary may 
be full of joy, without being ridiculous ; en- 
thusiastic, without losing its religious influ- 
ence. It should be the gladdest day of thfe 
whole year. Around it should cluster the 
happiest memories that can refresh the mind 
in after years. Its arrangements should be 
such as to interest without wearying. It 
should be so well announced as to fill the 
largest place that can be conveniently ob- 
tained to hold it in. The audience-room of 
the church to which the school belongs is, 
perhaps, as good a place as any. The speak- 
ers should be men of sound common sense, 
who know what to say and when to stop. 
There should not be enough of them to crowd 
each other as to time, or to introduce such a 
variety of subjects as to confuse the children, 
and cause them to carry home a vague jum- 
ble of thought instead of a few valuable les- 
sons. The 'hymns and music should be 
wisely selected, and executed in such a clear 
and ringing style that every one present can 
join in the voice of praise, and carry away 



The Anniversary Business, 205 

pleasant recollections of what was sung. A 
decidedly religious impression should be left 
on the minds of all who attend. 

A reasonable amount of speaking by chil- 
dren who are old enough to speak properly, 
may safely be indulged in. The selections 
should be scriptural, sensible, and free from 
nonsense. Too often this class of oratorical 
exercise tends to foster the vanity of the 
children who speak, and of the parents who 
go to hear and praise them. Instead of pro- 
ducing real edification, its result is to spoil 
the children. The young folks must have 
their fun, somewhere and somehow. But the 
less we introduce of mere fun at a religious 
anniversary, the better the anniversary will 
be. It is a shame to make a raree-show of 
the children whom we teach. They deserve 
a higher position than that of trained monk- 
eys in a menagerie, or of educated young 
elephants harnessed to sulkies in the hip- 
podrome. 



2o6 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



XXXI. 
(m Worn of %onq in % Swnirag-St^L 

WHAT shall we sing, and how shall we 
sing it ? 

It is customary for some people to make a 
business of finding fault with all Sunday- 
school hymns and tunes, and to groan with 
grievous lamentation over the fact that the 
singing of them is on the increase. For the 
most part, those folks who indiscriminately 
condemn Sunday-school music are the ones 
who know the least about it. There are 
plenty of rhymes and jingles which are fairly 
open to the sharpest criticism. On these 
let the voice and pen of the judicious critic 
wage a war of extermination. But let the 
wisest judgment be exercised in choosing be- 
tween the good and the bad. 

Our Sunday-school music is not a matter 
of entertainment. It is a part of the worship 
of the living God. To execute it rightly is 
worth flie highest skill we can bestow upon 



The Voice of Song in tJie Sunday- School. 207 

it. To make proper selections of what we 
shall sing, demands our most thoughtful at- 
tention. To teach and train our children as 
they should be trained and taught, is of in- 
comparably more importance than the secur- 
ing of a choir of sufficient ability to lead the 
adult congregation in the devotions of the 
church. 

* Considering the hold which a hymn or 
song takes on the? mind of the child who 
sings it, we ought to spare no pains to find 
such words as are scriptural, devotional, and 
full of sound common sense. They should 
be reasonably simple, and free from difficult 
expressions or obscure words, which tend to 
confuse, rather than to enlighten, the children 
who sing them. Religion and common sense 
are not inimical to good poetry. Let us use 
the best poetry we can find. There is no 
lack of material to select from. Some of the 
most valued Scripture truths are mellifluously 
expressed, in many poems which are furnished 
for our choice. Sound truth and good sense 
need not be sacrificed to pleasant rhyme ; 
nor need we, on the other hand, neglect that 
which is tasteful and poetical in order to find 



208 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

the truth. Both for children and adults, it is 
best to avoid that which is clumsy, harsh, and 
grating. Let us set aside, as clumsy, stilted, 
and unprofitable, such hymns as 

" Thy hand, O God, conducts unseen 
The beautiful vicissitude." 

The truth contained in it is indisputable ; 
yet no reasonable person would want to sing 
it. The fact that it is in a hymn book issued 
by one of our principal denominational pub- 
lishing houses does not make it any better. 
Nor would it be felicitous to sing, (from 
another extensively used book,) 

" Tossed to and fro, his passions fly 
From vanity to vanity;'' 

for, though nobody can cavil at the truth of 
the statement which it so didactically makes, 
to sing it with a proper regard for its rhyme 
will throw almost any congregation into a 
smile. The queer verse in Nettletons "Vil- 
lage Hymns," which embodies some of the 
ideas of Paul's words to the Corinthians orj 
the change which shall take place at the 
resurrection, is so clumsily worded that both 



The Voice of Song in the Sunday-School. 209 

adult and child may well be excused from 

singing it : 

" O ! how the resurrection light 
Will clarify believers' sight. 
With joy the saints will then arise, 
And rub the dust from off their eyes." 

It is a pity that these beautiful ideas are 
not more gracefully expressed. Yet possibly 
some believers may have drawn comfort from 
them. But it is difficult to conceive how any 
body, believer or pagan, infant or octogena- 
rian, can find pleasure or profit in singing 

" Far from the utmost verge of day 

Those gloomy regions lie ; 
Where flames amid the darkness play, 

The worm shall never die ;" 

or, (from another widely used book, and by a 
celebrated hymn-writer :) 

" Then swift and dreadful she descends 

Down to the fiery coast, 
Among abominable fiends, 

Herself a frighted ghost." 

It were easy to multiply instances of hymns 
which are in our regular Church books, the 
singing of which might minister to almost 
any thing else than profit. I call attention to 
these, only to remark that some of the hymns 
in our "grown-up" collections are as objec- 

14 



210 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

tionable as some of those which are furnished 
especially for juvenile use. 

There is a vast amount of hymnology i« 
our Church books which rings with the spirit 
of rich devotion, and which is always delight- 
ful to sing, either in adult or youthful con- 
gregations. " Rock of Ages," " There is a 
Fountain," " O for a Thousand Tpngues ! " 
"From Greenland's Icy Mountains," "All 
hail the power of Jesus' name," and many 
other such gems of sacred song, will be used 
as long as hymns are sung. They are not 
the particular property either of youth or of 
old age, but belong to all the Lord's people. 

Selecting, then, the best we can find, how 
shall we teach and train our children in the 
use of it ? 

While it is unwise to turn our Sunday- 
schools into musical academies, we can yet 
profitably teach our children to sing the 
praises of God when they are assembled for 
religious instruction. If this is done prop- 
erly, it becomes a part of their religious edu- 
cation. If otherwise, it is little better than a 
waste of time. In many of our schools there 
is no opportunity for meeting together, ex- 



The Voice of Song in the Sunday- School. 211 

cept on the Lord's day, and we must teach 
new hymns and tunes tften, if ever. In other 
oases, it is convenient to meet on some week- 
day evening. When that is practicable, it is, 
perhaps, well to do most of the teaching of 
singing at these outside meetings. 

If we teach on Sunday, we will generally 
find that one new hymn and tune will be as 
much as children can master in the course of 
the limited time we can spare to it. The 
leader or teacher should be a genial Chris- 
tian, with a fair knowledge of music and the 
art of teaching it. A good man with a clear 
voice and pleasant ways, can bring a large con- 
course of children to the harmonious singing 
of a new hymn and tune in a few minutes, 
where a disagreeable pedant would irritate 
the children, and postpone the half-completed 
learning of the new piece till the next Sun- 
day. If we try to teach children several 
tunes at one session, we are apt to leave con- 
fusion in thei* minds, unless the tunes are of 
remarkably different character, or unless we 
explain the hymns thoroughly, and tell a 
striking incident in reference to each. 

Every word, properly sung, is an act of 



212 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

worship. Let the children remember this. 
Impress it frequently, yet pleasantly, on their 
minds. It will help them to avoid the trifling 
and foolishness which too often accompany 
our Sunday-school music. 

As to musical education, the Lord's day is 
not the time, and Sunday-school is not the 
place, to learn music as a science. There is 
no more reason for learning or teaching mu- 
sic on Sunday, than for giving lessons in 
quantitative analysis, or blackboard exercises 
in the rule of three. But we may teach them 
to praise the Lord in the holiest hours we 
have. To praise him acceptably, we must 
employ our best musical ability. 

Suppose we are to sing a hymn and tune 
which are entirely new to the whole school. 
At the very outset, we want hymn and tune 
before the eyes of all the children. Let each 
child who can read have a printed copy of 
what is to be sung. It is an error to suppose 
that the note-books are thrown «away on chil- 
dren. In many of our public and private 
schools music is taught by note, and the in- 
troduction of cabinet organs, melodeons, and 
pianos into many thousands of families, is 



The Voice of Song in the Sunday- School. 213 

rapidly making our young people acquainted 
with the reading of music. The last ten 
years have made a wonderful change in this 
respect. 

Let the tunes be played on the instrument, 
the player being as skillful a person as can be 
had. Then let the leader of the music sing 
a verse, asking the children to attend to it, 
that some of them may follow him in the next 
verse. * It is not at all likely that many of 
them will do so, but in every school there 
are some children who take the lead in sing- 
ing, and who sing better and learn sooner 
than the others. These will probably catch 
the tune at once, even though not quite per- 
fectly. On repeating it, they are able to join 
with the leader ; and as the verse is sung a 
few times in succession, each repetition of it 
adds to the numbers of those who join in 
singing it. Soon you will have nearly all of 
them singing it. 

By singing the whole hymn through, with- 
out stopping for hints and improvements, a 
very unsatisfactory result is obtained. Stop 
at the end of the first two lines, if it seems 
advisable, and tell the children whether they 



214 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

sang right or wrong. If they did it incor- 
rectly, pleasantly show them where the error 
was, and help them to avoid repeating it. 
See that they understand the words ; and do 
not give them any words to sing, which will 
not bear explanation. 

The singing of a new hymn or tune for too 
long a time, is wearisome. Break it occasion- 
ally, and rest the children by suddenly starting 
them on one of the oldest and most familiar 
verses they know. Then take them back to 
the new one, and mark the effect. If they 
have been sitting for a while, let them stand, 
for variety ; and show them how much greater 
and better is the volume of sound produced 
when they are standing, than when they sit 

In the case of infant-school children, or 
ignorant ones who cannot read, the teaching 
must be oral. Where there is no instrument, 
the music may be entirely vocal. 

It is a great waste of time to spend sev- 
eral Sundays in learning and practicing new 
hymns and tunes which are to be used only 
at an anniversary and thrown aside. Some- 
times hymns are thus drilled into the chil- 
dren, so that they are bored to such an 



The Voice of Song in the Sunday-School. 215 
i 5 

extent that they never want to see or hear 
tell of those hymns again. To practice, only 
so that, at the anniversary, the audience will 
get a high idea of the children's musical abil- 
ity, is not a good way to praise God. 

Select good hymns for your anniversaries, 
and, indeed, for all other occasions. Those 
which are very redolent of the flavor of " our 
anniversary day," and whose chief burden is, 
" We meet once more, kind friends, before 
you," may safely be put on the retired list. 
Never teach the children a hymn which is 
not worth adding to the permanent hymno- 
logical stock of the school. However good 
the hymn or tune, it is a mistake to make 
too much of a run. on it. Some of the best 
hymns of five or ten years ago were so cru- 
elly sung to death that their mangled remains 
are now cremated and forgotten by schools 
which might still be profitably using them. 

Don't scold your children. Don't try to 
worry them into singing. Don't be telling 
them, " There, now, you careless, ungrateful 
boys, there's no use in my taking the trouble 
to teach you ; you have no music in your 
souls." Don't say to them, as I heard an 



2i6 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

acidulous person say to her class, u You aint 
singing ; what's the matter with you ? I ■ 
guess you don't like singing, do you ?" The 
poor girls evidently had small liking for her 
kind of singing, and as I listened to the way 
in which her vinegar-like voice rent the air, 
and noticed the uninviting expression on her 
countenance, I could hardly wonder at them. 
If the leader of music is a cross, quarrel- 
some person, disagreeable in his ways with 
teachers or children, turn him out at all haz- 
ards. If he is a very bad musician, or has a 
very squeaky or very gi;uff voice, or if his man- 
ners are exceedingly pompous, ask him to 
resign. If he mistakes voice for music, or 
bawling for singing, let him go, straightway. 
If his only qualification for leading the music 
and teaching the children to sing, is the fact 
that he has filled the office for twenty, forty, 
or a hundred years, deal as gently with him 
as possible, but remember that the interest is 
too important to be committed to the care of 
anybody who will suffer it to fail, or let it 
drag. " Let the people praise thee, O God ; 
let all the people praise thee !" 



The Crammed Child, 217 



XXXII. 

C{xe Crammeir Cjnltr, 

THERE are thirty-one thousand one 
hundred and seventy-three verses in 
the Bible. 

An Illinois child learned them all by heart. 
She learned and recited all of them during 
the three hundred and sixty-five days of one 
year. Her average recitation was eighty-five 
and four tenths verses a day, or somewhat 
over seven verses an hour, counting the 
child's day as twelve hours. Or if she stayed 
awake all night — as such a child might rea- 
sonably be expected to — she would have 
averaged about three verses and a half to 
each hour of the twenty-four. 

If it be objected that it would be an un- 
reasonable and absurd thing for a child to sit 
up all night, the answer is plain, that it is 
neither more unreasonable nor absurd than 
for the same child, or any other, to team the 
words of the Bible through in a year. 



218 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

The incentive held out to this poor child 
was the glittering offer of a silver mug. 
Some twenty or thirty other children who 
competed for the prize, succeeded in mem- 
orizing various quantities of Scripture. An 
Omaha child had twenty-eight thousand six 
hundred and eighty-two verses crammed 
into her in the course of the year ; the next 
on the " roll of honor," which should have 
been called the " Roll of Crammed Children" 
was an, Ohio child, who gave up the race 
after having mastered the comparatively 
trifling number of eight thousand five hun- 
dred and seventy-eight verses. And, vary- 
ing in amount all the way down to two hun- 
dred and seventy verses, the names of the 
competitors are enrolled and handed down 
to posterity, as the children who tried, in con- 
sideration of the promise of a silver mug, to 
commit to memory in one year all the verses 
of the Bible. 

It would be an interesting subject for in- 
vestigation, to discover the net gain of the 
child who learned all the verses of the Bible 
in a year. That is to say, beyond and above 
the mug, which, of course, was promptly 



The Crammed Child, 219 

♦ 
handed over to her on her recital of the 

twenty-first verse of the twenty-second chap- 
ter of Revelation. What does the child 
know of what she has studied ? For only so 
far as study leaves knowledge behind it, is it 
valuable. 

It must be remembered that the verses 
studied comprise not only the stories of the 
creation; of Samson, David, and Josiah ; of 
Esther, Jezebel, and the Queen of Sheba ; 
not only the Sermon on the Mount, the mir- 
acles wrought, and the parables spoken by 
our Saviour ; but that the possession of the 
mug involves the study of things which are 
harder to be remembered and more difficult 
to be understood. The chapters which de- 
tail the Levitical law, and those which tax 
the memory with the geography of the Is- 
raelite wanderings, must be committed. The 
child must recite about how the great army 
encamped at Kibroth-hattaavah, at Rimmon- 
parez, at Kehelathah, at Makheloth, at Hash- 
monah, at Bene-jaakan, at Hor-hagidgad, at 
Almon-diblathaim, and at other places with 
names as difficult to master. She must learn 
that the children of Simeon had in their 



220 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools.. 

inheritance Beer-sheba, and Moladah, and 
Hazar-shual, and Balah, and Azem, and 
Eltolad, and Bethul, and Hormah, and Zik- 
lag, and Beth-marcaboth, and Hazar-susah, 
and Beth-lebaoth, and Sharuhen. She 
must remember that Joktan begat Almodad, 
and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah, 
and Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah, and 
Ebal, and Abimael, and Sheba, and Ophir, 
and Havilah, and Jobab. She must recite 
the names of the sons of Levi, and of their 
descendants the Gershonites, the Kohathites, 
and the Merarites, unto the generation which 
was carried away captive to Babylon. She 
must combine memory for names with mem- 
ory for figures, as she recites from the book 
of Nehemiah about the 2,172 children of Pa- 
rosh, the 372 children of Shephatiah, the 
2,818 children of Pahath-moab, the 667 chil- 
dren of Adonikam, the 98 children of Ater 
of Hezekiah, the 345 children of Jericho, and 
forty or fifty other parties who, under Jeshua, 
Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, 
Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Ne- 
hum, and Baanah, followed Zerubbabel to 
Jerusalem, and thence to their respective 



The Crammed Child. 221 

homes. She must know that Jechonias be- 
gat Salathiel, that Salathiel begat Zorobabel, 
that Zorobabel begat Abiud, that Abiud 
begat? Eliakim, that Eliakim begat Azor, that 
Azor begat Sadoc, and so on to the end of 
the fourteen generations. 

Perhaps many readers hereof will insist 
that these names are too bothersome to read, 
and they will therefore skip them. If they 
do so they will admit the force of the plea 
for the poor child who was stimulated, by 
the offer of the mug, to commit them to 
memory. 

This effort to cause the children thus to 
cram themselves with the words of Scripture 
was doubtless the result of good intention on 
the part of the excellent^ people who offered 
the mug as a prize for doing it ; but it 
was none the less unwise and hurtful on that 
account. 

Do not understand me as throwing cold 
water on the study of the words of Scripture. 
Our children ought to commit them to mem- 
ory — statedly, regularly, diligently, faithfully. 
But let us plead for an intelligent committal 
to memory of that which is explained and 



222 Peeps at Our Sunday- Schools. 

understood as it is memorized. A child who 
commits thirty-one thousand one hundred 
and seventy-three verses of the Bible to 
memory, does not, as a consequence, gain an 
understanding of the word of God, any more 
than one who would memorize and recite 
the one thousand seven hundred and sixty- 
eight pages of" Webster Unabridged " would, 
in consequence thereof, have a perfect ac- 
quaintance with the structure of the English 
language. 

The value df the proper study of the 
words of Scripture cannot be overestimated. 
But if the study is mere word-study, it has a 
tendency to degenerate into worthless ritual- 
ism. A stimulus to the youthful memory is 
a good thing, and a prize is a better stimulus 
than the rod. But it is a sin to urge a'child, 
for any prize, however glittering, to under- 
take such a mnemonic effort as ought not to 
be expected of any person, young or old. 
The memory of Scripture, well learned in 
early life, is a precious possession for matur- 
ity and old age ; but the stuffing of the poor 
defenseless child cannot be too severely rep- 
rehended. 



Mr. Heavy and his Teaching. 223 



XXXIII. 

THE Sunday-school teaching of that 
well-intentioned man, Mr. Heavy, could 
not by any stretch of courtesy be called a 
success. 

Monday morning there was a severe head- 
ache. It was in the head of Mr. Heavy, who 
had slept all night in a close chamber, with 
no ventilation whatever. He rose in a 
gloomy frame of mind, and remarked that 
the labors of Sunday always made him feel 
poorly. 

He must dress, breakfast, and go to his 
office for the day. He washes only his face 
and hands, and hurries down to the break- 
fast prepared by Mrs. Bridget O'Grummagem, 
the female who presides over the cookery 
department of his household. The prelim-* 
inaries of family prayers are carried through, 
Mr. Heavy's family straggling down stairs to 
them, one by one, the last member arriving 



224 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

about the time he says amen. The prayers, 
under such circumstances, can be neither 
hearty nor edifying. 

Mrs. O'Grummagem has compounded and 
griddled some buckwheat cakes, which are of 
a bluish color, and of the specific gravity of 
lead. She has fried the tough steak, which 
the butcher sent, in grease enough to lubri- 
cate a ten-horse steam-engine. She has 
brewed and placed in the coffee-pot a brown- 
ish decoction which the Heavy family honor 
with the name of coffee. Good Mrs. Heavy 
does not concern herself about Mrs. O'Grum- 
magems department of household opera- 
tions, thinks it wrong to criticise a person 
who works as hard as she does, and never 
makes her appearance till just as it is time 
to go to the confused heaping on of proven- 
der, which she calls the morning meal. She 
thinks the family should eat whatever is set 
before them, " asking no questions for con- 
science' sake." Mr. Heavy partakes of the 
leathery and unctuous steak ; he anoints the 
leaden blankets of buckwheat with butter 
and syrup, swallow r s them half chewed, and 
washes them down with draughts of the 



Mr. Heavy and his Teaching. 225 

groundy beverage of Mrs. O'Grummagem, to 
conceal the taste of which he has to fill his 
cup more than half full of sugar. 

The morning meal is bolted and washed 
down. Mr. Heavy lights his cigar, and hur- 
ries away to the work of providing daily 
bread for the Heavy family. His stomach 
feels as if there were a vulcanized gum shoe, 
or some equally indigestible thing, tossing 
about in it. He thinks he must have eaten 
something which does not agree with him, 
but cannot think what it was. About eleven 
o'clock he drops in at an eating-house to 
11 steady his stomach " with a bowl of soup or 
some raw oysters. At one, he goes for his 
dinner. It is an eating-house repast, nearly 
as indigestible as the heap he ate for break- 
fast, but swallowed much more hurriedly. 
When he orders the meat and other things 
which compose its first course, he tells the 
waiter to have the mince pie ready in four 
minutes. He bolts the dinner, and finishes 
with the minced miscellany, concerning the 
composition of which it is unwise to pursue 
investigation. As quickly as his legs can 
carry him, he is back again to his office. He 

15 



226 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

cannot be said to have dined. As a locomo- 
tive bustles up to a wood and water station, 
stops while the water-pipe is thrust in and 
the drink taken, and the wood is .tossed into 
the tender, and then hurries on, with no 
experience of pleasure or of refreshment, so 
hurries this man of business to and from the 
gobbling of his meals. He chews tobacco 
till it is time to go home ; eats a pint of 
roasted chestnuts on his way to his tea ; bolts 
the evening meal ; feels poorly ; takes a nap 
on the sofa ; and finishes the evening by eat- 
ing a wedge of cold pumpkin pie. 

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 
and Saturday, Mr. Heavy's routine is much 
the same — the unventilated slumber, the 
hastily swallowed meals, the constant sensa- 
tion of weight at the pit of the stomach, the 
headaches, the general indigestion. Some- 
times he says he will go to Europe, and at 
other times he thinks that a trip to Florida 
will be exactly the thing for him. 

Saturday night, he takes down his ques- 
tion book, and mechanically engages in the 
lesson for half an hour. The passage is part 
of the Sermon on the Mount. The ques- 



Mr. Heavy and his Teaching. 227 

tions are such as, " What is taught in this 
verse?" "What question is asked in this 
verse ?" " What did Christ say ? " " What 
is said in this verse ? " " Why should it be 
so ? " " What next did Jesus say ? " " Why 
should this be done ? " " What is written in 
these verses ? " " What else had they heard 
said ? " These are the "large-print" questions, 
and afford him no assistance whatsoever. 
The " small-print " ones are such as, " What 
did he mean by the law and the prophets ? " 
" What did he mean by saying he did not 
come to destroy them ? " " What did he 
mean by saying till heaven and earth pass ? " 
" What is meant by a jot or a tittle ? " " What 
did he mean by their righteousness ? " " What 
is the meaning of 'exceed?'" "What does 
this teach ? " " Can you tell what the word 
'fool' means ? " * Mr. Heavy begins to think 
the last question has a personal reference to 
himself and his method of study, and closes 
the book. The rest of the half hour he 
spends with his elbows on the table, and his 

* These questions are actual ones, taken verbatim from oi|e 
of the popular question books published by an eminently 
respectable house. 



228 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

hands on his aching, weary head. He is 
thinking about nothing. Presently he is 
done. He has " spent some time over his 
lesson." He has no definite idea of the lead- 
ing thoughts which he is expected to teach 
his boys on the morrow. What better can 
he do? The meager question book is all 
the commentary he has, nor has he ever con- 
sidered the necessity of getting any more 
ample store of helps. 

The lesson study must come to an end 
early, for it is the evening for ablutions. The 
neglected epidermis of Mr. Heavy must 
receive its weekly allowance of soap and hot 
water. Its many thousands of pores to the 
inch, all over him except on his face and 
hands, are clogged with the accumulations of 
a week. Instead of being invigorated by the 
healthy stimulus of a cold bath, he is ener- 
vated by the warm water, which, leaving his 
pores open, also leaves him in a condition in 
which the delicate mucous membrane, so ac- 
cessible to every pore, is apt to be chilled 
before he can get into his bed, and give him 
a*cold, enough to last him all the hours of 
the Lords day. 



Mr, Heavy and his Teaching, 229 

The labors of the week are done, and he 
sleeps far into the day of rest. Mrs. O'Grum- 
magem goes to mass in the morning, and 
leaves the breakfast to sizzle gently over the 
fire while she is gone. The meat is done so 
crisply as to be unpalatable, and the potatoes 
are saturated with hot grease, so that their 
original fiber is no more recognizable than if 
they had been tanned. It is a hard meal for 
a Christian to eat as a beginning of his Sab- 
bath service. The unsavory edibles are de- 
voured, and the family rise from their meal 
in time to reach church while the first hymn 
is being sung. 

Church is over, and dinner presents itself 
in its regular turn. It is orthodox enough as 
to its meat, which was* cooked by Saturday's 
fire; but the potatoes, which Bridget O'G. 
put into fhe boiler just before she went to 
mass, are water-logged ; and the other vege- 
tables swim in grease. This meal is thank- 
fully eaten, and finished with cold pie, the 
undercrust of which is enough to make a 
man feel as if he were walking with Bunyan's 
Pilgrim through the Slough of Despond ; 
the consistency of the half-baked and mince- 



230 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

soaked dough being about the same as of the 
soil in that ill-favored locality. 

And now for the teaching. Without re- 
freshing his mind on the lesson (for did he 
not spend half an hour over it last night ?) 
Mr. Heavy starts for Sunday-school just as 
he hears the first strokes of the last ringing 
of the bell. The acceleration of his pace as 
he nears the scene of his labor flurries him 
somewhat, but he thinks it is small difference 
if he is late, for both he and his boys have 
often been late before, and they are all used 
to it. He reaches the school just in time to 
be tardy, and waits in the vestibule while the 
opening exercises go on. He is admitted 
w r hen they are finished, and, singular enough 
though the coincidence may be, nearly all his 
class are admitted with him, having followed 
his example enough to be just as tardy. He 
wishes in his heart that they had all stayed 
at home, for he says he does not feel very 
well this afternoon, nor does he feel much 
like teaching. 

The class are seated. "John, what is said 
in this verse?" John reads the verse, and 
the question is naturally enough answered. 



Mr. Heavy and his Teaching. 231 

" William, what is meant by this expression ?" 
William, who has not given attention to the 
meaning of this or any other expression in 
the lesson, looks somewhat blankly at Mr. 
Heavy, who says, " The next. Tell me what 
is the meaning of this expression?" The 
" next " does not happen to catch its meaning, 
and can give no exposition of it. For two 
reasons Mr. Heavy does not explain it. In 
the first place, he has heard somebody or 
other say that you never ought to tell a child 
what you can make him tell you ; in the sec- 
ond place, he does not know. So he passes 
the unfortunately worded question to the 
next, and the next, and the next, until all the 
boys take up the idea, it being the only idea 
in circulation in the class, and say, " Next. 
next, next." This irritates Mr. Heavy, and 
he sharply reproves the whole class. One of 
the boys who did not say " next " insists that 
to reprove him is unjust, and objects to being 
put in the category with the naughty fellows 
who were guilty of this violation of decorum. 
Another insists that this boy is playing the 
Pharisee, and making himself out a shade or 
two better than he really is ; for he says he 



232 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

heard him say " next " when the rest did. 
There is some lively sparring between the 
boys for a ' little while, which Mr. Heavy 
would fain interrupt, but that he knows that 
he would have to spend the time, if the boys 
were teachably quiet, in asking them more 
questions, with the answers to which neither 
he nor they are conversant. The superin- 
tendent gently raps on the desk, and calls for 
less noise in Mr. Heavy's class. 

Mr. Heavy looks sadly at the superintend- 
ent, and points to the boys as the cause of 
the disorder. But one spry and somewhat 
mischievous boy points to Mr. Heavy and 
winks, as much as to say, " He is the man." 

The asking of questions tortuously drags 
its weary length along, and the sound of the 
superintendent's bell is hailed as a welcome 
relief. The exercises are brought to a con- 
clusion. Mr. Heavy feels distressed, for the 
undigested and indigestible pie within him is 
being tossed about by the muscles of his 
stomach, and the distress is communicated 
to his heart. He is ill at ease, and cannot 
comprehend why his boys should be so 
troublesome, and his teaching of them so 



Mr, Heavy and his Teaching, 233 

lacking in good results. He thinks he will 
give up his class ; that he is not fitted for it ; 
has thought so for a long time; don't know 
what is the matter with him ; fears the Holy 
Spirit has forsaken him, or that he has com- 
mitted the unpardonable sin. 

Good Mr. Heavy, will you bend your ear 
for the whisper, of a faithful word ? Now 
listen : 

. You are a good enough sort of man in 
your way, but you are on the wrong track. 
You mean well, but you are making a hor- 
rible failure. Up, and try it again, but try in 
another way. You are suffering from indi- 
gestion. You have no right to suffer from 
it. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. 
Do you know it ? God has fitted you with a 
wondrous mechanism. Will you keep it in 
order, or do you insist on ruining it ? You 
have capacities for being happy, and making 
other folks happy, but your ill-treatment of 
your stomach and the rest of your system is 
making you wretched. 

Go and get some wholesome -food, and eat 
it like a Christian. Dismiss Bridget O'Grum- 
magem. Get somebody who can cook decent- 



234 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

ly. Give your stomach a fair chance. Sleep 
in a well ventilated room, and give your lungs 
some pure air to breathe. Wash yourself 
from head to foot once a day, and let the 
pores of your skin have a chance to do their 
work. Put your question book away for six 
months, and do some real study. Meet with 
your fellow-teachers, and cheerfully exchange 
ideas with them about the lessons and the 
*work generally. 

Try it, good Mr. Heavy, and your heart 
and your footsteps will experience a lightness 
to which you have been a stranger. Your 
class will hardly know you. They will wake 
up as you wake up, and the Lord will bless 
you all together. 



The Teachers Study-Meeting, 235 



XXXIV. 

Cfre fairs' Stetrg-P^ling. 

THE best kind of a teachers' meeting is 
that which is held for social study. 
Let the subject be the lesson for the coming 
Sunday. Let the conductor be the super- 
intendent, pastor, or any other competent 
Christian with a clear mind, a courteous man- 
ner, a warm heart, and a good acquaintance 
with Scripture. Where and when such a 
meeting should be held, depends much on 
local circumstances. Sometimes it is con- 
venient to hold it in connection with a pray- 
er-meeting or evening lecture. In the latter 
case, it is well to have the subject of the 
lecture as much as possible in harmony with 
that of the lesson. 

When it is held after a lecture on any 
other subject, however sound or eloquent, 
the teachers find it hard to concentrate their 
wearied minds on the appointed lesson. 

It is very easy to kill a teachers' study- 



236 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

meeting. Coldness and formality will freeze 
it to death. If the people who come are 
allowed to sit next to each other without 
making each other's acquaintance, and to 
come and go without salutation, it is enough 
to drive them away. If the leader of the 
meeting has neither knowledge of the lesson, 
nor judgment about carrying on the study of 
it, he can quench all desire on the part of 
those who are present for becoming ac- 
quainted with it. If the reading of the 
verses is dismal, the singing dragging, the 
prayers heartless, and the room cheerless, 
no reasonable person . can be expected to 
want regularly to lay aside every other duty 
for the sake of being in attendance. 

One of the prime requisites of a teachers' 
study-meeting is a tolerably cheerful room. 
Whether it be a room in the church, or the 
parlor of some private Christian, let the 
spirit of religious happiness blossom out 
from every inch of its walls and floors, and 
from every article of its furniture. It should 
be comfortably heated in cold weather, and 
well ventilated in any and every season. 

Another requisite is a superintendent, 



The Teachers Study-Meeting. 237 

pastor, director, or other person who knows 
how to make everybody enjoy a home feeling. 
Constitution and by-laws are out of place in 
a teachers' meeting. If there are any petti- 
foggers who have come to split hairs or to 
divide straws, send them off to some cross- 
roads debating society, and there let them 
make themselves illustrious. If there are 
any very disagreeable teachers, let them stay 
at home and study their lessons in the retire- 
ment of the most cheerless garret they can 
find. The leader must adapt himself to the 
condition of his fellow-students, the teachers 
who are present. As they have come to 
study the lesson, he need not expect them 
to be perfectly prepared on it. If they were, 
there would be less need for a teachers' 
study-meeting. It is a pleasant theory that 
those who attend such a meeting have spent 
from eight to forty-eight hours in the dili- 
gent study of the lesson, before coming. So 
far as the practice is concerned, it is well 
known that ninety-six out of every hundred 
have done no such thing. 

How shall we ask the teachers questions, 
at our teachers' meetings ? 



238 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

A very good way is not to ask them at all, 
but to make them ask for themselves. % Supply 
all the teachers with pencil and paper, and 
encourage them to ask what occurs to them 
Promise them that the leader will either try 
to answer every reasonable question himself, 
or get somebody else to do so. He need 
not promise to answer* everything. A man 
who pretends to know every thing is gener- 
ally an impostor, and is sure to be found out 
by somebody who knows much less than the 
pretentious man claims to know. 

Do not try to tell everything that ever was 
written about the passages you study. 

Some good folks have a perplexing way 
of handling commentaries and other expos- 
itory works, which does not always tend to \ 
the elucidation of the passage studied. If 
they own fifteen commentaries, they will read 
every thing that each commentator says on 
the subject. Such a course produces bewil- 
derment. We have seen whole companies 
of teachers thus bewildered, the leader think- 
ing it his duty to smother the meeting by 
launching great chunks of commentary at it. 
Commentaries are not to be despised if 



The Teachers Study-Meeting. 239 

properly used. It is the abuse of them which 
is mischievous. 

Let every teacher present have a Bible in 
his hand, ready to turn to any passage re- 
ferred to ; and let him be handy in the use of it. 

Far above all commentaries is the actual 
acquaintance with Scripture, 'and the com- 
paring of one part of it with another. The 
light which Scripture sheds on Scripture, is 
not appreciated by people who have never 
looked for it nor used it. It is fearfully neg- 
lected both in pulpit, desk, and class. We are 
improving, however, in this respect. Let us 
be encouraged' and aim at greater improve- 
ment. 

As there is a great reluctance to answer 
questions, the question box will always be 
found a desirable help to a teachers' meet- 
ing. Let everybody write questions and 
drop them into the box. The conductor 
can either answer them himself, or refer them 
to # some one in the company. A thought 
suggested by a question asked, even anony- 
mously, may often reveal the fact that there 
is a difficulty in somebody's mind which had 
not suggested itself to the conductor, and on 



240 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

which a little light may be acceptable to all 
who are present. 

Pray. Begin your study-meeting with 
prayer. Keep it up in the spirit of prayer. 
Close it with . prayer. Not with the mere 
formula of prayer, but with the heartfelt de- 
sire that God Will send light for the under- 
standing of the lesson, grace to teach it, and 
blessing on it when it is taught. 

It is no uncommon thing to hear the state- 
ment, " We had a teachers meeting, but it fell 
through!' A boy at school once asked his 
teacher where the figures on the blackboard 
went to when they were rubbed out. The 
teacher, somewhat taken aback by the un- 
usual question, replied that he did not know. 
As the investigating spirit of the arithmetical 
boy naturally desired to follow up the figures 
he had been footing up, so we may experi- 
ence a laudable desire to follow the teachers' 
meeting that " fell through," and see how it 
fell, what it fell through, and where it fell t©. 

In one of the old castles of Europe there 
is a trap-door in the floor. From this trap- 
door a stone troughway, or well, leads almost 
perpendicularly down to a dark and sluggish 



The Teachers' Study-Meeting. 241 

stream, which flows below. The stones are 
set with things like bayonets, or spear points, 
in order to make the man who was dropped 
down the well feel as uncomfortable as pos- 
sible in his descent. Down this horrible 
hole many a doomed man of' olden time was 
made to " fall through," reaching the water 
in a condition which made it certain that he 
would never again be seen alive. 

The " falling through " of a teachers' meet- 
ing may be hardly as violent or as painful as 
this ; but often it is as complete, leaving as 
little trace of its final history. Indeed, the 
meeting often vanishes into thin air. Breth- 
ren may criminate each other, trying to find 
out whose fault it was, but the result even of 
this is far from satisfactory. A Chinaman in 
San Francisco is said to have purchased a 
lump of ice, having had but limited acquaint- 
ance with any but its refrigerant properties. 
Noticing that it was wet on the outside, he 
stood it out in the sunshine to dry. After a 
while he went to see if it was dry enough, 
and lo ! it was gone. Without asking further 
questions, he immediately began to belabor 
his next door neighbor for stealing the frigid 

16 



242 Peeps At Our Sunday-Schools. 

treasure. Finding fault over a vanished 
teachers' meeting is generally about as wise 
as this, and just as full of profitable result. 
The Chinaman should have known enough 
(and probably did, next time) to take care of 
his ice properly. The people who have the 
teachers' meeting in charge should be suf- 
ficiently well up in their work to keep it from 
melting away without giving account of 
itself. 

A careful inquiry into the way in which 
meetings died, would seem to indicate that 
they were not established on a sufficiently 
substantial basis. Sometimes the authorities 
gave notice that " there would be a teachers' 
meeting, provided any of the teachers saw fit 
to come." This, being about as much of an 
invitation to stay away as to come, seldom 
drew large crowds. Sometimes the meetings 
have been announced as " an experiment, to 
be continued if successful ; to be dropped in 
case of failure." Of course this kept all the 
teachers on the lookout for failure. In fact, 
they would have been disappointed if the 
meeting had not failed ; and, as it would not 
do to be disappointed, the meeting had to 



The Teachers' Study-Meeting. 243 

" fall through." There was a quiet " I told 
you so " written on the faces of the teachers, 
which effectually discouraged all attempts at 
reconstruction. Sometimes the bombastic 
pretentiousness of the leader of the meeting 
has had the effect of repelling the teachers, 
instead of attracting them. And sometimes 
the teachers, knowing very little of the object 
of such a meeting, felt no interest in it, and 
calmly allowed it to perish. 

One of the best teachers' meetings in 
existence, other than a study meeting, is the 
prayer-meeting of one of the largest schools 
in Brooklyn. This is held for half an hour 
before the session of the school, the school 
session beginning at three in the afternoon. 
Nearly all the teachers are regularly and 
punctually present. There are few speeches, 
or none. The prayers are brief, earnest, and 
pointed ; the point being toward asking a 
special blessing on the teaching of the lesson 
for that day. How abundantly these prayers 
have been answered ! How graciously and 
constantly the school has been revived ! . 
The school, and the Church to which it be- 
longs, experience continual refreshment and 



244 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

renewal of strength. Great numbers of the 
children, and of their parents, have been 
brought to Christ in the last few years, and 
the teaching is done with the heartfelt joy 
that accompanies such success. 



Getting Ready for the Lord's Day. 245 



XXXV. 

&tttim HUairg fox % % oxtfz fag, 

WE hear much about the preparation 
which the Sunday-school teacher 
should make for his labors in the class. He 
should be amply provided with a stock of 
well-digested scriptural knowledge ; he should 
be well practiced in the art of imparting it. 
He must take a prescribed course of teach- 
ers' meeting, well shaken together with home 
study, and seasoned with all attainable im- 
provements. 

But it is, with many good people, a matter 
of secondary importance whether or not the 
superintendent makes any preparation for 
his work. Some superintendents seem to 
suppose that the management of a school is 
like the running of a railroad train. They 
jump on, like a conductor, at the station 
whence the train starts, expecting to find all 
hands aboard, and in readiness for their 
duties. It is truly possible for a man to get 



246 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

through with his duties, after a poor fashion, 
without special preparation ; but it is in a 
limping, wooden sort of a way, with no after 
feeling of joy, or even of satisfaction. There 
are duties in connection with a Sunday- 
school which none but the superintendent 
can properly perform. There is a fatherly 
oversight which none can exercise as well as 
he can. It is a mistake for the superintend- 
ent so literally to " take no thought for the 
morrow " as not to busy himself at least as 
early as Saturday with some preparation for 
his Sunday duties. 

Most of our superintendents who are good 
for any thing, are busy men. Their week-day 
time is fully occupied. From the hurry and 
bustle of business, they can snatch a few spare 
moments* for study and thought, and they 
can exchange occasional words concerning 
their Sunday-school duties and privileges 
with others whom they are constantly meet- 
ing who are situated just as they are. But 
the close of the week generally brings relief 
even to those who are very busy. Saturday 
evening is generally accepted as a semi-relig- 
ious breathing spell. Many people study 



Getting Ready for the Lords Day. 247 

their lessons then, who seldom look at them 
at any other time. There are fewer tea-par- 
ties, or great entertainments, or business 
meetings, or concerts, or lectures, on Satur- 
day evening, than on any other evening of the 
week. 

Saturday evening is a grand time for the 
superintendent to make ready for Sunday's 
work. If his lesson is to be studied, and his 
memory is very short, there is less chance of 
his forgetting what he learns, than if he had 
learned it on Monday. It is well to have a 
teachers' meeting for concerted study of the 
lesson ; to have it as early in the week as 
possible, and to have the superintendent 
conduct it. But we cannot always have all „ 
we want, and in spite of our best endeavors, 
both superintendent and teachers must often 
resort to solitary study. 

The quiet of Saturday night affords good 
opportunity for the superintendent to look 
over his roll of teachers and scholars, with a 
view to the relief of difficulties, the supply of 
wants, or, perhaps, the change or amalgama- 
tion of certain classes. If he comes to his 
school on Sunday with his mind made up 



248 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

about these things, he can attend to them 
much more successfully than if he does them 
on the spur of extemporized thought. 

The selections of hymns to be sung, of 
chapters to be read, of persons to be invited 
to offer prayer, and of sundry other of the 
incidentals of the services, can be made bet- 
ter on Saturday night, than when the super- 
intendent has taken his stand before the 
school. Very often do thoughtless superin- 
tendents blunder into the announcement of 
something which is entirely foreign to the 
lesson, simply for the want -of this timely 
forethought. I once heard an unprepared 
superintendent blunder through the whole 
of the sixth chapter of John, which has sev- 
enty-one verses. It had no connection with 
the lesson, and he read it horribly. He then 
commanded the children to sing the fifty- 
first Psalm. Their singing was worse, if pos- 
sible, than his reading. He had not spent 
Saturday night in preparing for his Sunday 
labors. 

One of the most profitable exercises of a 
Sunday-school is a review at the close of the 
lesson. If the superintendent is a man of 



Getting Ready for the Lords Day. 249 

good sense, and of some acquaintance with 
Scripture, he can profitably spend five or 
ten minutes in such an exercise. It is well 
for him occasionally to secure the services of 
the pastor, or of other good friends, for this, 
for the sake of variety. Saturday night is 
a very good time to jot down a few mem- 
oranda, bearing on what to say and how to 
say it, with a view to reviving the school. 
Even if a teachers' meeting has been held, or 
if the superintendent has carried lesson helps 
in his pocket for wayside reference all the 
week, Saturday night is a good clinching 
time to fasten the nails of truth which may 
have been somewhat loosely driven. 

And as the superintendent retires to his 
rest on Saturday night, he can offer such a 
prayer as on no other night of the week, for 
a coming day of joy and usefulness, of sun- 
shine and success. Thus working and thus 
praying, he can go to his Sunday work with 
a wealth of furnishing for it which will make 
it all -delightful, profitable, and triumphantly 
successful. 



250 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 



XXXVI. 

qprffoxUtfmne of it %U? 

AFTER all, what is the use of it? Sun- 
day-school gatherings ; beautiful rooms ; 
splendid maps ; elegant banners ; diligent 
study ; joyful meetings ; great anniversaries ; 
prodigious processions ; curious question 
books ; delightful lesson leaves ; uniform 
lesson study ; careful searching of the Bible ; 
powerful periodicals ; very large conferences 
of teachers ; preaching, and speech-making, 
and teaching, and visiting, and praying, and 
working, and hoping — what is to come of 
it ? Are we throwing our work away, or 
are we doing it for good results ? Is the 
Sunday-school the poor thing that a great 
many people claim it to be, or is it doing 
great good, and is it capable of accomplish- 
ing more ? 

Let us not claim for our pet any excel- 
lences which it does not possess. Let us not 
try to thrust it into a higher place on the 



What will Corn* of it All? 251 

catalogue of beneficent operations than it 
deserves. Let us beware of the mischief of 
endeavoring to make it a substitute either - 
for the Church or the family. It is a part of 
both, and a helper of both ; and to both may 
we look for counsel and support for it. 

That the Sunday-school has its weak spots, 
nobody need attempt to deny. That foolish 
and incompetent people have sometimes been 
intrusted with its management, is not dis- 
puted. That it can be bettered, even as 
regards its present improved condition, we 
are all agreed, and that is what we are all 
laboring for. The self-sufficient old person, 
who insists that what he is doing is done the 
best possible way, because he has done it in 
that way ever since he was born, is not the 
man who will make the most triumphant 
success in his work. It is a pleasant feature 
of the Sunday-school work of to-day, that the 
people who are doing it have their eyes and 
ears open to every thing that seems to be a 
real improvement. The saving truths of the 
Gospel are the same that they always have 
been. The ways of imparting them have im- 
proved with the world's progress. We may 



252 Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools. 

make mistakes, but let us look to the power 
and love of the Spirit of God to correct them 
and to lead us right. People who never made 
mistakes, never did much that was worth do- 
ing. A mistake, well improved upon, some- 
times leads to magnificent successes. 

There are mighty possibilities in the Sun- 
day-school work of to-day. With its millions 
of children under some kind of Bible, teach- 
ing and training, it is giving the nation a 
store of scriptural knowledge and religious 
truth w r hich must be a savor of life to the 
growing generation. Let us be hopeful. 
We thank God and take courage. Through 
the clouds we see the shining of the coming 
glory. Amid all present imperfections, we 
rejoice in the promise that we shall stand in 
full completeness before our God. And when 
we are welcomed by our eternal King and 
Redeemer, may it be with the whole com- 
pany of the children whom he has committed 
to our care to teach and train for everlasting 
life. 

THE END. 




I 




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Pillars in the Temple; 

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guished for their Piety and Usefulness. By Rev. W. C. 
Smith. With an Introduction by C. C. North. Large 
16mo., pp. 366 1 25 

Pioneer, Autobiography of a, 

By Jacob Young. 12mo..... 1 7U 

P cherts, Bishop, 

Lifeof. By C. Elliott, D.D. ,12mo ' 1 00 



BOOKS FOR THE FAMILY— BIOGRAPHY. 

Rogers, Hester Ann, 

Life of. 18mo %0 65 

Smith, Rev. John, 

Memoirs of. By Rev. R. Tkeffry. ISmo. 75 

Successful Merchant, the. 

By Rev. William Arthur, A.M. 16mo .,.,,,.... t 00 

Village Blacksmith, the. 

18mo 75 

Wall 's End Miner, the, 

Or, A Brief Memoir of the Life of William Crister. By 
Rev, J . Everett. 18mo ". 50 

Walker, Rev. G. W., 

Recollections of. By M. P. Gaddi3. l2mo 175 

Watson, Rev. Richard, 

Life of. By Rev. T. Jackson. With Portrait. 8vo 2 75 

Wesley and his Coadjutors. 

By Rev. Wm. C. Larrabee. Two volumes. 16mo 2 25 

Wesley Family* 

Memoirs of the. By Rev. A. Clarke, LL.D. 12mo. 1 75 

Wesley, Rev. Charles^ 

Life of. By Rev. T. Jackson. With Portrait. 8vo 2 70 

Wesley, Rev. John, 

Life of. By Rev. Richard Watson. 12mo 1 25 



DOCTRINAL. 

Admonitofy Counsels to a Methodist. 

Illustrating the Peculiar Doctrines and Economy of Meth- 
odism. By Rev. John Bakewell. l8mo 3 |0 

Analysis of Wats oris Institutes, 

By Rev. John M'Clintock, D.D. l8mo 50 

Angels, 

Nature and Ministry of. By Rev. J. Rawson. 18mo &5 



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